I finished those questions. And I felt that the most interesting question is the second one. The question is that should I cite the common knowledge which is from the textbook or not when I write a research paper. And I choose that I should cite it. Because I don’t want to get into any unnecessary troubles. The answer told me that is the safest strategy.
For many students, the information from the textbook is some common knowledge which doesn’t need to be cited. Or they just don’t want to do that. They think that is an unnecessary and useless behavior. And it is not a big deal in most time. However, the world is full of surprises. Maybe some authors or professors see your paper when they have a very bad day and then get very angry because you are a potential plagiarism criminal. So, it’s not just a challenge for me, but a big potential challenge for every student. This situation is quite different from my educational culture. First of all, in my country, nobody will think that somebody use some common knowledge without cite the resource is a plagiarism behavior. Even a professor accuses a student who doesn’t cite the common knowledge resource has a plagiarism problem; the dean will prefer to give this student another chance and call that professor as a “trouble maker” in private. Second, in China, our culture always prefers to give people another chance. We understand that some people made mistake, just because they don’t know rules. We don’t like destroy a person’s life or future in some simple and unreasonable way. I see a lot of culture conflicts between Chinese and western people. The first one says that the innocent is not the one to blame. The last one says that rules is rules. For me, it would not be an issue for me. As Chinese people said that Smart guys know the ins and outs. I don’t want to have any academic troubles in this strange country. So, I will cite everything I can.
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