The Quotation That Fit Too Well
For a Written Examination response analysing a Romanian short story, Radu wants to use a critical comment he found online: a single sentence that perfectly captures the story's theme. He cannot remember the critic's name or where he read it. He also has two quotations from the primary text itself, which he knows precisely, and one idea of his own about the ending that he thinks is original but is unsure about. He plans to open his essay with the borrowed sentence because 'it sounds clever', then build his argument around it. His teacher has stressed academic honesty and the analysis of the primary text.
1. Advise Radu on whether and how he may use the borrowed sentence, and explain the risk of building his essay around it.
Read the worked answer
He may not present the sentence as his own. Using an unattributed borrowed formulation is plagiarism, even in an examination response, and even if he cannot recall the source. The honest options are: (a) omit it, or (b) use it only if he can attribute it accurately, which he currently cannot.
Building the essay around it compounds the problem. First, it makes an unverifiable secondary claim the spine of his argument, so the whole response rests on something he cannot substantiate. Second, it displaces analysis of the primary text, which is what the task rewards. The safer and stronger approach is to express the same insight in his own words and support it with his two accurately known primary-text quotations, keeping his own interpretation of the ending as his distinctive contribution. If he genuinely wants the critical perspective, he should paraphrase the idea generically ('a common reading holds that...') rather than reproduce an unattributed sentence.
2. Radu is unsure whether his idea about the ending is original. Explain how he should handle this uncertainty in the essay itself.
Read the worked answer
Originality in an examination essay does not mean inventing a reading no critic has ever had; it means arriving at and supporting an interpretation through his own analysis. He should therefore not claim novelty ('no one has noticed...') - a claim he cannot verify - but present the reading as his own argument grounded in textual evidence. The framing should be assertive about the interpretation and modest about its status: 'The final image suggests...' supported by quotation and reasoning, rather than 'This is an original reading.'
This protects him from an overclaim he cannot defend while still earning credit for independent interpretation, which is what the assessment values. The test is whether the reading is his and is supported, not whether it is unprecedented.