Teachable Moment: Melania Trump

Most people have seen this video of Melania Trump's speech at the Republican National Convention lined up with Michelle Obama's speech eight years ago. Melania apparently worked with many speech writers, so many are assuming this is sabotage, as they wanted to embarrass her and make it very clear that these are not her own words.

What a fantastic resource to use with our students when talking about Academic Honesty and Plagiarism. We can use it to talk to students about copying the work of others, as well as badly paraphrasing their work. We can also use it to talk about writing from the heart, the importance of showing their own understanding in the work and authenticity. I can imagine this turning into a great project where we get students to firstly use this as a case study, then work on creating their own keynote speeches, as if they were the spouse of a presidential candidate!