Is ‘Academic Dishonesty’ Now a Fact of College Life?
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Academic dishonesty is an issue that is considered a serious challenge among college students and has garnished national attention. Worldwide, academic dishonesty has grown to become a huge challenge in colleges and universities, leading to undesirable consequences for both the educational system and the students. According to Jane, academic dishonesty is any form of cheating that takes place in relation to academic practices, and it ranges from plagiarism, fabrication, cheating to sabotage. Today, there is a negative view that educated society tends to take in regard to academic dishonesty. The issue has grown to become a crisis, in fact, the International Center for Academic Integrity conducted a study on academic dishonesty on 70,000 college students, and it discovered that most of them admitted to engaging in academic misconduct; 58% admitted to plagiarism, and 64% admitted to exam cheating. To offer an in-depth understanding of the issue, Crawford Philip wrote an article titled ”Is ‘Academic Dishonesty’ Now a Fact of College Life? He attributes the rise of academic dishonesty to several factors. Therefore, this paper will discuss if the author’s language use is convincing enough.
Crawford uses persuasive techniques that include expert opinions and evidence. The language employed by the author is convincing enough because of the use of evidence that takes the form of quotes, figures, and statistics, which all help in supporting his claim. In several instances in the article, the author incorporates ideas, opinions, and perspectives from other people, particularly educators, such as Robert Shupp, a professor at the University of Houston, Claude Riviere, a professor at the University of Paris System, and several others. It is therefore easy to convince the reader of the author’s argument on the reasons that academic dishonesty is on the rise in colleges and universities. More so, the expert opinions offer more weight to the claims made. Furthermore, Crawford uses figures and statistics that enhance the article’s credibility, authenticity, and correctness. In addition, the use of evidence is the very persuasive language because it allows the reader to see the author’s argument and knowledgeable as more reliable and logical. Therefore, by the use of the persuasive technique of incorporating evidence and expert opinions, the author makes his claim convincing to the reader. Typically, the author employed less of his views and opinions, and the little he made, he backed them up with expert opinions and statistical figures.
Secondly, Crawford managed to make his claim convincing because he employed the language strategy of ethos, logos, and pathos. These concepts were foundered by Aristotle and are considered the primary theories of persuasion. The credibility of the author is represented by ethos, which has three dimensions; trustworthiness, competence, and dynamics. It is evident that Crawford has an in-depth understanding and competence of the issue discussed; being a member of the International Herald Tribune, he has vast experience of the academic dishonesty challenges in colleges. Trustworthiness was achieved by the use of evidence and expert opinions. However, the dynamics factor was not well incorporated into the building of the claim by the author. Logos are considered as the logic and reasoning of the argument. In the article, the author minimizes the use of his own views and perspectives, which eliminates the aspect of fallacies. Crawford carefully chooses the supporting materials that help in broadening his persuasive opportunity to the reader. The article has some emotional appeal, pathos. The author manages to involve the reader in his claim as he makes arguments that are personal. The fact that academic misconduct hurts several members of society, including the learning institution, the students, educators, and the parents signify the damage it has in society.
However, the article lacks logic because of such a complicated issue; it is poorly structured. If the article were well-structured, then it would have been more convincing. With only a title and the author’s name, there is no introduction, body, action, or discussion. Without an introduction, the author fails to engage the reader or outline the main points, making the article hard to follow. Also, the article is not through because there are no sufficient details of the experiment, statistical analysis, and tests, simulations that were conducted to generate the results that were considered effective. However, the positive aspects of the article structure are that it is written in short paragraphs, with the first paragraph having bigger fonts, which make the reader interested. If the author had well-structured the article, with more convincing details, then the reader will have completely agreed with his claim.
Academic dishonesty has grown to become a menace in colleges and universities across the world. It is unfortunate that most students are not aware that they are engaging in academic misconduct. Academic dishonesty ranges from plagiarism, cheating, sabotage to cheating in tests. Crawford Philip wrote an article on the issues and attributed the rise to instant access and availability to the pre-written assignments and papers, a job market that is shrinking, and average academic level. The purpose of this paper was to discuss if the author’s convincing language strategies worked. The strategies that worked include the use of persuasive techniques that include expert opinions and evidence, and also the incorporation of the language strategy of ethos, logos, and pathos. However, the author failed to further convince the reader because he failed to provide logic in a well-structured paper.