The good news is that it's very easy to avoid committing plagiarism!
The first thing to do is to ensure that you take good, careful notes as you read.
- Is it your words or someone else's?
You'll also save yourself time too if you write everything down when you find it, rather than having to go back over your reading to chase up details later. You might think that you'll remember where you found things, but the reality is that a week or two later, you won't!
It's also very important to be referencing correctly. Referencing is a system by which you attribute the ideas that you use in your work, both in the text, and in a reference list at the end of your assignment. The next section explains more about what referencing is, how to do it, and the different schemes which exist.