Academic Practice: The Process Of Ensuring - Essay Example

Academic Practice: The Process Of Ensuring 1. What is good academic practice More often than not, students will be required to write academic papers that are used by their tutors for grading purposes. As a result, each student should adhere to the ethics of a good academic practice. By definition, a good academic practice can be described as the process of ensuring that the thoughts and ideas used in an academic paper do not resemble those of other authors. Therefore, even as the student gets to source materials from other sources, the student should be able to translate what they have learnt from their subject of study 2. (a) Why it is important to provide references when using other people’s work In any academic research, a student is allowed to use another person’s thoughts and ideas, but only sparingly. Nonetheless, even as the student gets to refer to the works of other people, much of their work should be derived from what they have been taught by their tutors. If need be, a student is required to give credit where it deserves such that they are called upon to provide a reference from where they have extracted thoughts and ideas. The main reason why a student would find it necessary to provide references for their work is to show the tutor that they have researched widely. At the same time, ensuring that their work does not appear as if it has been plagiarized. Furthermore, providing references enables the reader or tutor to find the source where the student extracted thoughts and ideas for their work. This way, the tutor will be able to authenticate the sources of reference used by the student in order to ensure that the student has not cooked up their own ideas without a point of reference. (b) When different forms of referencing should be used in assignments There are various occasions when students are required to provide references on their work. In the event that a student provides direct quotations from an author’s work, they are required to provide a source of reference or else their work may be considered plagiarized. While in the process of writing an academic paper, a student may find it necessary to provide findings from research papers, from statements of fact or arguments of different authors. Regardless of the points of references, they should be cited properly in the bibliography page. 3. What a W100 should do to implement good academic practice and avoid plagiarism in their assignments In any academic writing, it is paramount for the student to ensure that they acknowledge the source of their work. Failure to do this might force the tutor to declare their work as plagiarized. Plagiarism is an offense that is considered illegal, and it might lead to the cancellation of a student’s work. Even though students are advised to provide references for their work, this does not give them the leeway to copy or extract information from those sources. In this case, the student is required to use the academic source as a reference point and then express those ideas in their own words. In order for a student to maintain a good academic practice, they ought to ensure that their work is not plagiarized in any way whatsoever. After all, the essence of opting for academic sources is not to copy directly from them, but instead they ought to use them as a source of reference. Plagiarism is an offence that is taken very seriously, and it may lead to suspension from the university let alone cancellation of the paper. Furthermore, there are times when students are required to collaborate with others in generation of ideas. However, this should not be misconstrued to mean that the students can copy directly from each other since each and every student will be required to submit work of their own. Nowadays, most tutors have plagiarism software that will help them to detect any form of plagiarism in a student’s work. In order to avoid plagiarism, a student should desist from passing their assignments to others as this will make their assignments appear as if they are plagiarized. Hence, in order to ensure that their work is not plagiarized, students should always strive to practice academic etiquette such that the work they submit to their tutors is sought from their own thoughts and ideas. 4. Explain the following concepts; Descriptive rules and prescriptive rules Descriptive rules are the rules that accept the patterns in which they are communicated or relayed to the user. As such, these rules are required to provide a clear description of the way things are. Also, descriptive rules can be disseminated in various ways, and they don’t ignore a construction simply because someone is not interested in them (Goodie, 2005). In the case of prescriptive rules, they are often required to provide guidance to the user. Therefore, prescriptive rules aim to make a value judgment about the correctness of that rule and try to force a usage that aligns with one formal norm. Rule of law In trying to understand this term, many of the apparent differences in understanding the rule of law are attributable to the legal and constitutional and systemic contexts in which the principles are applied. Therefore, rule of law can be described as the fundamental platform under which rules and rights that help to create a fair and prosperous environment (Goodie, 2005). Parliamentary sovereignty Parliamentary sovereignty is a unique legal arrangement without parallels in comparative constitutional law. Hence, it can be said that parliamentary sovereignty is a unique feature and a result of the unwritten constitution. Also, this refers to a system whereby parliament is often considered as an authority that is supreme to the extent that it can make or do away with any law (Goodie, 2005). 5. English legal system One of the most obvious and most central characteristics of all societies is that they must possess some degree of order to permit the members to interact over a sustained period of time. As such, different countries have different legal systems or forms of order. In the English legal system, law plays an important part in the creation and maintenance of social order. The most obvious way in which law contributes to the maintenance of social order is the way in which it deals with the disorder and conflict. In trying to understand how the English legal system works, it is not just about learning legal rules, but is also about considering a social institution of fundamental importance. The English legal system is divided into various categories of law. Some of the common categories of law in the English legal system include; common law and civil law, common law and statute law, private and public law, and civil and criminal law. When looking at the English legal system, the courts are the most obvious place to start. The courts of law are considered the most visible feature of the English legal system. Courts are not unique institutions in the English legal system as they virtually exist in the legal systems of every modern state. Also, they exist in other non-state legal systems. However, despite the pervasive nature of courts in the English legal system, it is easier to describe the work of individual courts within the legal system than to define to define the concept of each court. Courts can be defined as places concerned with settling legal disputes. However, the British parliament has sometimes said that disputes under a particular Act are determined, not by courts, but by particular tribunals set up for the purpose. In the English legal system, to call something a court is not simply to describe what it does, but it is also an ascription of status. In this case, courts are seen as having centrality to a legal system that is not true for other institutions. Since the United Kingdom have a complex society, courts often seem central to the very idea of a legal system. Thus, courts and legal systems become synonyms. Whatever functions courts do have, they are not tasked with the role of dealing with the day-to-day activities of the English legal system. It can be said that the court is the central point of the English legal system. It controls what happens within the legal system. Nonetheless, the English legal system is hierarchical such that one court’s decision may be overturned by another higher court. In this system, courts are important because of the contribution they make to the development of the jurisprudence of the legal system. The English legal system is guided by rules of law that come from two main sources. The first source is the statutes passed by parliament. These are the statutes whose main intention is to create rules of law which are binding prospectively, occasionally, and retrospectively. The other source of law is the decisions of the courts where no statutory provisions are found; the common law. In the English legal system, courts make law when they interpret statutes, when they give a legally authoritative explanation of what the Act means. In Britain, there is a separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary. Therefore, it can be said that the theory of the separation of powers is fundamental to any Western, liberal democracy of which the British legal system is taken as an example (Goodey, 2005). Bibliography Goodey, J. 2005. W100 Rules, Rights and Justice: An Introduction to Law. Milton Keynes: Open University. Read More