Plagiarism? Are you kidding?

Dr. Joel Bloch, the video maker of “Plagiarism? Are you kidding?’, discusses the functions of citing sources in summary. The male student in this video insists that citing is unnecessary and time-wasting because the professor only wants to know he has read everything. The female student opposes his idea because citing is the indispensable rule of summary. In addition, she explains that if more people have similar opinions, his argument can seem more believable. In contrast, he argues that paraphrasing every sentence differently is so difficult for him to approach. However, she states that writing main ideas is better and more trustworthy. Furthermore, she admits that sometimes citing is redundant, but we should cite for readers who wants to track more information in addition to show these ideas are others’intellectual properties.

Whether only writing down main idea of the passage can show our well reading of it instead of paraphrasing each sentence into a different form to constitute our summary or not is a hot topic in this video. In my opinion, the female student is more reasonable. The definition of summary is generalizing the main idea of the passage to show our thorough reading and understanding of the article. So main idea is enough and even better than paraphrase of each sentence for summary.