[Editor's note: Señorita in the City is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in Manhattan. She blogs at Señorita in the City.]
The first days of school are the ideal time for teachers to set rules and establish routines. This year it only took until week five for one of my Spanish students to break a major rule: No plagiarism or use of online translators.
In September I take extra care to walk the class through my syllabus and the special section dedicated to plagiarism and online translation Web sites. I explain that translation Web sites translate word for word and very rarely make sense. I encourage the freshmen to try their best with the Spanish they are learning each day — that’s what matters. I remind them that turning in work that is not theirs will be considered plagiarism and that there will be consequences. And then I share with them my own embarrassing translation story.
Throughout my student years I was absolutely terrified of being accused of plagiarism. In high school and college the consequences of being caught plagiarizing were steep: a failing grade in the class and a notation on your transcript. I was always extremely cautious when writing anything for school. Then out of nowhere, I received a very embarrassing comment on a paper I had submitted for my Spanish composition class.
The assignment was to compose a work of fiction based on a non-fictional Spanish speaking person. I chose Enrique Iglesias and wrote an elaborate story about his facial mole. While writing, I had to look up the Spanish word for mole. In my haste, I failed to double check the word and wrote an entire story about Enrique’s beautiful and sexy mole, all the while referring to the burrowing mammal. I was mortified.
I recently came across my first student assignment to come through the likes of Babelfish. I assigned a “seasons” booklet to my freshman class. They were to make a page representing each of the four seasons. On each page they were to write the months of the season, and three sentences describing the weather for that season. Most students wrote simple but correct sentences like: En el verano hace calor y sol. Perfect. Fantastic. One student however went above and beyond: El otono puede ser muy calido en Nueve York en la primera. Sin embargo, mas tarde en la temporada, el clima puede comenzar a tener frio. Besides using way more vocabulary than we had learned, the word temporada has nothing to do with seasons of the year, but instead is used when talking about fashion or sports seasons. Boom! Just like that Babelfish had ensnared its first victim.
I waited until the end of the period to speak to the guilty party. I showed him examples of sentences from other seasons booklets and then we looked at the work he had turned in. I asked him about his previous Spanish experience and he told me he had taken Spanish once before in middle school. I asked him how he was able to come up with such complex sentences. He admitted to using an online translator and asking a friend for help. I told him I appreciated him wanting to do his best on our first project, but what I really wanted was to read his work. I explained that reading something written by a friend or the Internet does not help me help anyone become a better Spanish speaker. I gave him the chance to re-do his booklet without any penalty, but said if this happened again he would get a zero.
While I realize the mis- or overuse of a dictionary or online translator is not the same as plagiarism, in the foreign language classroom I treat the two as equals. I really have no choice. While looking up a word is no big deal and a Spanish-English dictionary is a purchase I encourage, it can quickly escalate into feeding entire sentences into a Web site. When that happens, students are not presenting their own work and are by definition plagiarizing, even if it’s a computer rather than a person producing it.
