Diagnose the relationship before correcting the sentence
The exercise develops reasons, not labels. A missing locator, a distorted summary and an overly close paraphrase are different problems and require different repairs. Students first identify what a reader cannot verify, then revise the passage. That order makes the activity useful beyond one citation style.
Instructors should announce the citation system used in their course. The cases use a compact author–date form so that attribution remains visible. Punctuation can be adapted to APA, Chicago, Harvard or disciplinary guidance. This activity does not establish an institutional penalty and is not a substitute for the approved process in a real allegation.
Two synthetic source extracts
Source A — Keller (2025), p. 18: “In a four-week library course, the proportion of participants providing complete locators in a practice task rose from 46 to 71 per cent. Voluntary participation and the absence of a control group mean that the course cannot be credited with a general causal effect.”
Source B — Imani (2024), p. 52: “Version histories can reveal writing decisions, but they do not capture the whole working process. Offline notes, conversations and later file imports often remain invisible. Metadata should therefore be interpreted only alongside other information.”
Practice references: Keller, R. (2025). Source trails in a library course. Journal of Writing Education, 8(1), 11–27. Imani, S. (2024). The limits of digital process traces. Learning in Higher Education, 12(2), 49–63. The publications, authors and figures are invented for this exercise and must not be cited as real research.
Complete three diagnostic rounds
Round one: Give each case one primary category: missing attribution, incomplete direct quotation, inaccurate representation, overly close wording or traceable use. Underline the exact words that support your diagnosis. More than one issue may exist, but identify which one a writer needs to repair first.
Round two: State a repair action for Cases 1–4. Options include adding attribution, completing quotation marks and locator, correcting the substance, or paraphrasing after reconstructing the idea from understanding. Then write an improved sentence. Do not introduce information absent from the two extracts.
Round three: Compare Cases 4 and 5. Both contain an author, year and page. Explain why the formal presence of a citation does not by itself make source integration successful. Identify how Case 5 preserves the limit of the synthetic study. Suggested timing is 20 minutes individually, 15 minutes in pairs, then a whole-group resolution; adapt it to access and course needs.
Answer key with reasons and possible repairs
Case 1 — missing attribution: The precise figures and course derive from Source A, but the passage offers no reference. Possible repair: “In Keller’s voluntary course group, complete locators in the practice task increased from 46 to 71 per cent (Keller 2025, p. 18).” If the writer draws a causal conclusion, the study limitation must also be represented.
Case 2 — direct quotation without a locator: Quotation marks correctly signal copied wording, but the supplied page is omitted. Repair: “Version histories can reveal writing decisions” (Imani 2024, p. 52). A local style may place author, year and page differently; the reader’s ability to locate the words is the substantive point.
Case 3 — inaccurate representation: Imani explicitly says that histories do not capture the complete process. The student sentence reverses the source. A perfectly formatted reference cannot cure that error. Repair: “Version histories reveal some writing decisions but omit activities such as offline notes and conversations (Imani 2024, p. 52).”
Case 4 — overly close paraphrase: Attribution and page are present, yet sentence structure and distinctive wording closely track Source A. A possible independent version is: “Complete locators became more common in the voluntary group after the course, although the design cannot establish causation (Keller 2025, p. 18).” Retain the figures only if the argument needs them.
Case 5 — traceable, proportionate use: The passage attributes the observation, uses independent wording and preserves the design limitation. Other solutions can be equally sound. “Traceable” does not mean that the wider paragraph is automatically persuasive; readers would still need its research question, context and the writer’s next inference.
Turn the pattern of errors into the next lesson
Review performance by error type instead of reporting only a total score. Frequent missing attribution suggests practice in identifying claims that need evidence. Inaccurate summaries call for reading-and-checking tasks. Close paraphrases need work on comprehension, note-making and sentence reconstruction rather than mechanical synonym replacement.
Ask each student to finish with one transfer rule in their own words and a new example. This reveals whether they can apply the reasoning rather than repeat the key. In a graded version, disclose points, acceptable variants and permitted materials beforehand. Results from the case set are not evidence of deceptive intent.
Use the four-week plagiarism-prevention sequence to place this activity within sustained teaching. The independent-work rubric offers separate process and product criteria. Browse the higher-education practice hub for related tools, or consult the evidence-review foundation for interpreting similarity findings.