Reinvesting two contradictory sources: plagiarism, contradiction, and stance
You assign a reinvestment task: a 3-minute oral synthesis with a one-page outline, combining two documents on teen screen time. Document A, a French-language news article, states that 62% of Quebec teens spend more than three hours a day on social media. Document B, a Radio-Canada video clip, gives 41% and explains that the two surveys defined 'screen time' differently. The criteria are selection and accuracy of information (30%), organization (20%), integration of the two sources with no copying (30%), and personal stance clearly separated from the synthesis (20%). Chloé's outline presents 62% as fact, cites Document A once in the introduction and never mentions Document B's explanation. In her recording, two sentences are word-for-word from Document A, and her final 45 seconds are a personal opinion about her own phone use.
1. Score the integration criterion (30%) and decide what to do about the two copied sentences.
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Integration - 12/30. The criterion asks for both sources and for the relationship between them. She uses one source, mentions it once, and leaves the contradiction unaddressed, which is the central intellectual work of the task. A single citation earns credit for acknowledging a source; the absence of Document B and of any comparison keeps the mark well below half.
On the copied sentences: two verbatim sentences without quotation marks meet the school's definition of plagiarism, even though she cited Document A somewhere. But the surrounding evidence suggests patchwriting from her notes rather than intent to deceive - she cited at all, which a student deliberately hiding a source usually avoids. So: apply the procedure (note on the copy, a short conversation, resubmission of the outline permitted), do not treat it as a disciplinary case on first occurrence, and do not let the resubmission erase the original record. Then teach the difference explicitly - quotation marks plus page or source for any borrowed wording, paraphrase when the idea matters and the words do not.
2. How do you address the 62% versus 41% contradiction in feedback, given that she presented 62% as fact?
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The contradiction is the assignment, so the feedback should not smooth it over but make it the visible problem. Name the two figures side by side, then ask one question she can answer: what did each survey actually ask? That reveals that 'screen time' and 'social media time' are not the same measure, so the figures do not refute one another - they answer different questions. A synthesis that presents either number without that qualification is inaccurate even though both numbers are real.
Give her a sentence frame in French to repair it: 'Selon A, 62 % des adolescents…, alors que B avance 41 %, une différence qui s'explique par…' Then have her produce two more sentences on a new pair of figures before the next task, so the move is practised rather than explained.
In the written feedback, use the language of sourcing: an accurate synthesis reports what a source claims, attributes it, and comments on divergence. '62% des ados' as a bare declarative sentence is the error to name.
3. Her personal stance takes 45 seconds of a 3-minute oral and is woven into the synthesis. How should this be scored, and how do you avoid penalising the same feature three times?
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On the stance criterion (20%), this earns roughly 13/20: a stance exists and is developed with a personal example, but the criterion requires it to be clearly separated, and it is not - she moves into opinion without signalling the shift. Partial credit, not zero.
The double-penalty risk is real, because the stance also consumes time that the synthesis needed, which affects organization, and it contributes to the missing source comparison. Decide where each feature is primarily scored and score it there once. Here: separation of stance is scored under stance; organization is judged only on the internal structure of what remains (does the synthesis have a beginning, a middle, an end?); integration is judged on whether the two sources are present and related, not on the opinion.
Also check the outline against the recording. If her outline places the opinion in a distinct section and the recording does not, the problem is delivery under time pressure, which is feedback about rehearsal, not about structure - and it changes what you say to her.