Stop plagiarism (1)

Stop plagiarism (1)

The Sunday Post published on Nov. 28, 1999 an article titled
Finding the funny side of things, a good reason to laugh. I
highly appreciated the article by Otong S. Djuharie, a lecturer
at Sunan Gunung Djati State Institute for Islamic Studies in
Bandung. His article was very good. It was easy to understand and
full of analyses. Besides, he viewed things from several aspects,
testifying to his wide knowledge.

However, one day I came across a book titled Reader's Choice.
A very good publication indeed. Page 161 has the same contents as
the article mentioned above. It has the title Why We Laugh and
was written by Janet Spencer and first published in Woman's Daily
Journal in the U.S. in 1974.

A rechecking of Djuharie's article showed that there were
similarities in more than 80 percent of the article (words,
paragraphs and style).

Djuharie's latest article in The Jakarta Post, Building
Professional Teachers on Jan. 25, 2000 put its readers in the
same quandary. I found similarities in H. Douglas Brown's book
Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language
Pedagogy (chapter 22, pages 425 to 443).

Actually we can quote someone's opinion but we are obliged to
mention the source. I would like to have clarification on whether
this is a matter of plagiarism.

I hope the same problem will not recur in our beloved
newspaper. It should be borne in mind that the Post's readers are
very critical.

IRWAN

Bandung