Because we use pre-written models as inspiration in Writing Foundations, every year a parent or two asks me about plagiarism, and rightly so. Plagiarism is a serious concern in today’s society. We’ve seen newspaper reporters and countless college students suffer the consequences of copying another writer’s work and calling it their own.
So why do we use pre-written models at all in Writing Foundations? Ultimately, because the practice of using a model is simply not plagiarism – it is imitation. There is a significant difference and a number of terrific reasons to learn how to write via imitation:
1. Learning to write and thinking of what to write require very different and separate parts of the brain. New and young writers should not be expected to do both at the same time if one wants them to enjoy writing for the rest of their lives – or at least know that they can write if they have to. For educational purposes, providing a pre-written model or source takes the pressure off the need to think of what to write so the students can focus on how to write.
2. At the very beginning of the year, many students’ paragraphs look and sound somewhat similar to the model because the first two or three lessons are not about the written paragraph, but about outlining or note taking. Outlining is an essential skill that must become second nature for a student to be able to outline original works later on. Pre-written models and sources provide the proving ground for outlining expertise.
3. Students need many years of writing practice in order to develop confident writing muscles that are able to eloquently express original thoughts when they are older. Ideally students will start writing practice in elementary grades and have a solid foundation by high school. Writing Foundations is designed with the goal of equipping students to move on to subject-centered classes like history and literature where writing is an established vehicle of communicating understanding in the high school grades. If a student does not have the skills that a course like Writing Foundations teaches, s/he will not be able to meet the requirements of such classes. At a young age, Writing Foundations begins building the skills of outlining, organization, drafting, structure, style, editing, and revising through well-written models.
4. Original essays and reports are rarely meaningful outside of contextual courses. In other words, requiring students to write a completely independent research report on Genghis Khan in Writing Foundations, for example, would be an exercise in frustration. The course isn’t about ancient warriors. It is about how to write. Therefore, eliminating the research but fusing together portions of well written pieces of sources is the practice a student needs for that later challenge elsewhere.
5. Growing musicians learn to play well through practicing and imitating the works of proficient and established composers. They are never accused of plagiarism for playing a Mozart concerto before an audience. They never call the content their own work of composition. Writing Foundations applies the same principle to budding writers. Just like music, written works are a form of art to be played with and imitated. Writing Foundations uses the ancient practice of learning from the masters when teaching kids to write.
Ben Franklin learned to write by imitating a publication called the Spectator. He shares his experience in his autobiography:
by Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With that view, I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence [Ms. B's NOTE: he outlined], laid them by for a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. [Ms. B's NOTE: as Writing Foundations students move to narrating and drafting without using the model.]
6. The practice of imitation reaches back to the Greek and Roman art of Rhetoric. The first cannon or office of Rhetoric is Invention. A basic tenet of Invention is that every new act of human creativity is a recreation of pieces that already exist:
Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing.
- Joshua Reynolds
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void, but out of chaos… Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject and in the power of molding and fashioning ideas suggested by it.
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818
7. Remember the “blank-page trauma” that is sometimes still used as a method of teaching writing? Writing Foundations purposely eliminates an otherwise natural void that all children face when it comes to writing. The course teaches children how to gather images and ideas, order them, mold them, and fashion them into well-written works of art. We start simple, and the skills quickly grow and expand to meet mature challenges as children move on to other disciplines that fill their “blank slates” with content.
8. Writing Foundations assignments are progressive and cumulative, which means that what a student has learned earlier is built and expanded upon later. We go from learning to outline sentence by sentence in the very beginning to asking “What happened next?” in a summary or “What happens next?” in a narrative. Eventually students are able to outline and write personal and timed essays using only their own thoughts as the source of information.
9. Students in Writing Foundations never call the content of early written pieces that imitate the model their own original thoughts. When their pieces are edited for content and coherence, as well as grammar and usage, the point, again, is HOW to write, not what to write. To develop a strong respect for intellectual property, students in the older grades are taught to regularly add bibliographic footnotes to their papers to indicate the source(s) they used.
10. Finally, in ten years of teaching Writing Foundations courses, I have yet to hear of a student who has been guilty of or even accused of plagiarism in their high school or college classes. If they learned their lessons well, they are essentially inoculated from making that mistake at all. On the contrary, I have heard many comments about former students’ papers being used as models for their classmates because of the powerful style and solid skills they have.
Plagiarism is a deliberate intent to copy another person’s content and take credit for it. Inherently, content is peripheral in Writing Foundations. Students take Writing Foundations to develop a writing voice and unlock the ability to create their own writing from examples set by those who have gone before them. Imitation works like a marinade that takes time and cannot be rushed to achieve deep results. Using models naturally and effectively provides the artistic canvas and the materials for building the powerful skills that inspiring writers and communicators use everyday.
. Anything electronic/on the computer is tolerable to most boys and intriguing to most girls. Getting a personal email can be very exciting! 
