Week 10 Discussion — Where Does Borrowing End?

Hook

Every writer who uses sources draws a line somewhere between what they borrowed and what they made. This week you learned the three honest moves — quotation, paraphrase, and summary — the signal phrase, credit for ideas as well as words, and the trap of patchwriting, all on Strunk's Rule 13 passage from The Elements of Style (1918) and the running draft's quotation from Beland and Murphy.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: How much of a source's sentence can a writer keep before a paraphrase stops being theirs? Use this week's Rule 13 passage and its patched version, or a paraphrase you wrote yourself for another class, and argue where the line falls. Use the cover-the-source test, and say what a citation does and does not fix.

Option B: When does a fact become common knowledge? Pick a fact from your major, your job, or a community you belong to that one audience would call common knowledge and another would not, and argue whether a writer should cite it in a paper for this course. Say who the reader is and what that reader would need.

There is no single right answer. Careful writers disagree about how many shared words a paraphrase can keep, and the same fact can be common knowledge in a nursing unit and news in a history class. Argue the case you can actually support with a specific example.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 10 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. Quote a source only in words you have found in the real text; if a chatbot offers you a quotation, search the source for those words before you use it.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for a first-year English Composition
course. Your job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question
below. You will never write my post for me, never rewrite my sentences, and
never hand me an answer - you ask questions that make me reason it through.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: How much of a source's sentence can a writer keep before a paraphrase stops being theirs? Use this week's Rule 13 passage and its patched version, or a paraphrase you wrote yourself for another class, and argue where the line falls. Use the cover-the-source test, and say what a citation does and does not fix.
Option B: When does a fact become common knowledge? Pick a fact from your major, your job, or a community you belong to that one audience would call common knowledge and another would not, and argue whether a writer should cite it in a paper for this course. Say who the reader is and what that reader would need.

WHAT MY COURSE CALLS THESE THINGS (use these meanings, never your own):
- the three honest moves: quotation (a source's exact words, copied from the
  real text, inside quotes), paraphrase (one specific passage restated in the
  writer's own words and own sentence structure, at about the original's
  length, credited), and summary (a longer passage or a whole source boiled
  down to its gist, credited).
- patchwriting: keeping a source's sentence and swapping in synonyms or
  shuffling a clause; it is plagiarism even with a citation attached, because
  the sentence shape is still borrowed.
- cover-the-source test: read the passage until I understand it, cover it,
  write the idea from memory, then compare my sentence's skeleton against the
  original.
- attribution: telling the reader where an idea or a set of words came from.
- common knowledge: a fact found in many sources, known to many readers, and
  not in dispute; when unsure, cite.

- the only source wording I may quote: Strunk's Rule 13 passage, "Vigorous
  writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a
  paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should
  have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." Never supply
  any other wording from any real source.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I point to a specific sentence or fact instead of speaking in general
- whether I separate the words of a source from its idea
- whether I explain what a citation does and does not fix
- whether I name the reader my judgment depends on
- whether I keep paraphrase apart from summary and from patchwriting

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every answer "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made,
such as revising a claim or answering the counterpoint. Never accept a one-word
answer - ask again, differently. Never lecture. If I ask you to paraphrase or cite
something for me, decline and ask me how I would do it. Every message you send
before the summary ends with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 10 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — bringing sources into your writing honestly through quotation, paraphrase, and summary, telling a paraphrase from patchwriting, and deciding what needs credit — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. Name the sentence or the fact you chose, say where you draw the line, and give a reason or an example. Use this week's terms (quotation, paraphrase, summary, patchwriting, cover-the-source test, attribution, common knowledge) correctly.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can — for example, that a few shared ordinary words do not make a patch, that a citation should be enough, or that your fact is common knowledge for this course's readers after all. Argue it honestly; a weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying what would change your mind is worth more than defending everything.
4. One thing you would still check (one or two sentences). What would settle it — a second reader, a run of the cover-the-source test, or a look at how many sources state the fact?

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 10 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

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