Dulce et decorum est is a poem by Wilfred Owen. It is a piece that is often cited as an influential anti-war poem and, as such, is studied on many courses in many countries. One assumes that people studying the poem want to learn how to “read” poetry and appreciate the techniques that Owen used to create this work. One way that tutors use to judge whether their students have learned about the techniques and are developing skills in interpretation and expression is to set questions or essays about the poem for their students to submit. It is usually possible to answer the set questions and write an essay by a close reading of the teaching materials and / or asking your tutors for advice and guidance. That is what the teaching materials and tutor support are there for. If someone does not want to have a personal engagement with the poem/s they study, they need to question why they are studying at all.
Students are usually busy people with a variety of conflicting pressures on them – academic, social, familial, work related and so forth. It is therefore tempting to try and “short circuit” the effort needed in studying and completing an essay by finding someone else’s work on line and submitting it, or parts of it, as one’s own. This is, not to mince words, cheating. The technical term is plagiarism and all universities have strict policies about plagiarism and serious penalties for those who plagiarise. To help prevent and discourage plagiarism, most universities use plagiarism detection software. If work is submitted on line, the software compares it with everything else that has ever been submitted or published on line and informs the university as to what percentage of a particular piece has been found elsewhere on line. That allows the university to decide whether a particular student’s work has been copied, either wholly or in part, from elsewhere on the web.
Realistically, however, it will not be until you are doing your PhD that you will be required...