Does Allempires.com help with university?

Yes, definitely. The more practice you have exercising your thought processes, adhering firmly to factual accuracy, and the ability to summarise and extract salient pieces of information, the better you will do at college. This site is not only informative, but is mind exercsing as well, so it ain't going to do you any harm! Contrast this to spending your time on Bebo etc...

Constantine, how do universities discern between common and uncommon knowledge? And how can you prove an idea is yours (when it is), but it appears someone else (that you did not know of) has thought of it to (the marker finds this out after you handed it in). Let me know if you don't get what I'm saying - I don't know how to express it.

OK, I get it now. Thanks Dolphin

Originally posted by Knights Constantine, how do universities discern between common and uncommon knowledge? And how can you prove an idea is yours (when it is), but it appears someone else (that you did not know of) has thought of it to (the marker finds this out after you handed it in). Let me know if you don't get what I'm saying - I don't know how to express it.

Knights, there are a number of ways to check for plagiarism. Firstly, the marker is usually an academic professional in the field in which you are studying and so they can recognise when one of "your" ideas, is actually a recrafted idea of something written in a book. In my first year at uni we were advised not to plagiarise because: "your tutor/marker is an expert in this field and if you copy something, it is likely they have already read that for themself beforehand" (1st year history unit course guide). However, this is not watertight. Sometimes universities appoint staff who cannot be expected to be expert in every aspect of the unit which you are studying. As a case in point, our Islamic history unit was taken by a man whose expertise was purely in India. So as much as he would be expected to know about Indian Muslim history and basic Islamic history, you could probably have gotten away with plagiarism if you chose to do you assignment on say, Islamic Java or Turkish Anatolia.

Secondly, they have data processing programs where they can check on the web for very specific phrases to see if you copied it from online. The program matches a phrase, and if exact matches are found you may find yourself in trouble.

Thirdly, if they find two students assignments are too similar, both students may be pulled up for colluding in doing the assignment together and so not being original in how they do their work.

The system isn't airtight, but most students don't dare try and cheat it for fear they will end up expelled from the university and end up losing their unit enrollments fees also.

...So all empires teaches you not to do that (no offense)?

I prefer talking about phil or literary or sport or music or humour than history, but I don't like most other forums. This one is just right, not too active where you cant keep up, and not too dormant where you have to reply to yourself to keep active..But the odd Irish history topic usually stirs me into some history speak!

Aster,

I would have to second what Byzantine Emperor. I did my undergrad work in Communications with a minor in History. The good thing about Communications was that I didn't need to take any language classes. Upon graduating I decided to shift gears and go to grad school, only problem was that I had absolutely no foreign languages, so I took the year off and did two years of latin and a year of french in that span. Some of my classmates in grad school did not do this and are in the unfortunate position of having to take time consuming language classes in addition to their graduate coursework and other responsibilities. So like my friend Byzantine Emperor said take as much Latin as possible as soon as possible if you wish to attend grad school.

In certain areas while there appears to be nothing really that new to say there in fact actually is. It's not always the position you take but how you examine and compile the information at hand. An example of such would be an examination of Crime and Punishment that focuses on Punishment rather than crime and categorizes punishments not by crimes but rather crimes by their punishment. So in theory while you might be saying something that has been said, a different way of examining what has already been dealt with sometimes does a great deal to further the discussion of a historical period.

In regards to your original question, AE helps a little with practicing your writing skills. Generally it's a good idea to get into the habit citing in everything you write that is academic in nature no matter where it is being written. It strengthens the argument to have cites, again no matter where the argument is being published (being read by anybody).

To build on what Hugoestr said, Latin will also help your understanding of English grammar. My grasp of English greatly improved when I took up Latin.

advise you on methodology books and history books that will be helpful for your learning

Edited by Aster Thrax Eupator - 15-Aug-2007 at 14:44