to give the credit to whom it is due.....

[Melvin]

Sir,

Good day! I copied this reading selection in your website and you acknowledged also that it was not yours. Which website I should cite in  my bibliography?
The author of the best-selling The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown has now sold over 80 million copies of the book, making him one of the richest novelists of all time.  All four of his novels were on The New York Times bestseller list in the same week, and he made it to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of the year 2005. His income from the sales of The Da Vinci Code alone was over $200 million. This latter figure makes his fortune next to that of Harry Potter series author J. K. Rowling, whose wealth from the sales of her novels is estimated at over $800 million.
   But Brown’s first three novels had little success, with fewer than 10,000 copies in each of their first printings. However, his fourth, The Da Vinci Code, became a runaway bestseller, going to the top of the New York Times best seller list during its very first week of release in 2003.
By how much does Dan Brown’s income from his books compare to that of J.    
     K. Rowling?
     a. one fourth.            c. one-third.
     b. one half.            d. two thirds.

 One magazine has declared Dan Brown as what? (I was advised by some of my panelists to rephrase this question)
     a. among the 100 wealthiest people.          
     b. among the 100 most influential people.  .
     c. more popular than J. K. Rowling.
     d. more prolific than J. K. Rowling
 How much is the estimated wealth of Dan Brown
     a. $10 million            c.$80million
     b. $200 million            d. $800 million

Am I going to use adapted or adopted to refer to the selection(s) I borrowed from other sources. I don't want to plagiarize so please help me.
Thank you very much. God bless.

[Joe Carillo]

Your bibliography need not cite any source for the sample test you adapted—not “adopted”—from the Forum website. You can be accused of plagiarizing a certain test only when you copy it word for word without getting permission from the official test maker. You see, good sample tests just faithfully follow or emulate the pattern of known official sample tests of TOEFL, TOIEC, or IELTS. They just change the names and particulars used in those tests, staying as close as possible to the patterns and difficulty levels set for each test item. In fact, test developers or writers that attempt to create totally new test patterns, or those that depart significantly from official test samples just for novelty or originality or creativity’s sake, are actually doing it all wrong. This is because every test passage and test question in official tests follow very precise language levels and exacting testing criteria for such aspects as grammar, sentence construction, syntax, and idiom for the different reading and listening comprehension levels or writing skill levels. Indeed, the more faithful or closer a sample test is to these criteria, the more useful it will be to those who use or take it for exercise or familiarization purposes.

You said that you were advised by some panelists evaluating your dissertation that you need to rephrase the question in this particular test item:

One magazine has declared Dan Brown as what?
     a. among the 100 wealthiest people.           
     b. among the 100 most influential people.
     c. more popular than J. K. Rowling.
     d. more prolific than J. K. Rowling

I think they did so because in actual official tests, it’s extremely rare for questions to be phrased in “hanging form” like the one you presented above, with the question ending with the interrogative “what?” and the answer choices presented in serial, enumerative fashion after that. On extremely rare occasions, the official test makers may do it just to create “distractors” or “distracters,” or perhaps simply to “mark off” or identify a particular test in a series they have produced, but that’s an idiosyncratic liberty only they as the official test producers can do. In any case, a simple structural fix for that question is to just drop “what?” so that it becomes a simple declarative statement followed by the answer choices, as follows:

One magazine has declared Dan Brown as
     a. among the 100 wealthiest people.           
     b. among the 100 most influential people.
     c. more popular than J. K. Rowling.
     d. more prolific than J. K. Rowling.

 
Note that in this latter test construction, each answer choice ends with a period or full stop--clearly indicating from a sentence structure standpoint that the phrase or clause is simply completing the opening statement of the test.

I hope these observations of mine will be of help to you.

[Melvin]

Sir,

Thank you for the time and knowledge you shared.
What if I asked permission from the authors via email and didn't reply? Would acknowledging them suffice?

[Joe Carillo]

For substantial intellectual property like passages from literary works--novels, short stories, poetry, nonfiction, and journalistic pieces--you need the express permission of the authors to use material for your own benefit, as in a dissertation or feature article for publication. You may e-mail your request to them directly, but in many cases, you may be directed to get permission from the publisher, since it's usually the publisher that would acquire the copyright to the work upon its publication. If they don't reply and you don't get permission, that's just too bad. You couldn't use the material, but of course, you always have the option of using other material that's close to the sense or message conveyed by your first choice. You then can try your luck and request permission in the same way as before.

When you only need to use a brief excerpt from copyrighted work like, say, one or a few sentences or perhaps as much as a short paragraph, just quote the material and attribute it properly to the author. This is permissible under the copyright or intellectual property laws of many democratic countries, including the Philippines. Just don't go so trigger-happy as to appropriate huge chunks of the copyrighted work and pass them off as your own by paraphrasing them. That's intellectual piracy for which you could be sued and penalized!     

[Melvin]

Sir,

Thank you. I'm sorry it's quite too late. I've been busy.

[ynancy12]

thanks for shared knowledge
Price in India