Eliciting ELT Students’ Understanding of Plagiarism in Academic Writing

Year 2018, Volume: 4 Issue: 2, 193 - 211, 26.09.2018

İrina Rets Ali Ilya

https://doi.org/10.32601/ejal.464115

Cited By: 6

Abstract

Given that the term ‘plagiarism’
is open to multiple interpretations, resulting in confusion among students and
teachers alike, research that investigates the current state of empirical
evidence and sheds light on students’ ability to define and detect this notion
has important pedagogical implications. This study examines undergraduate English
Language Teaching (ELT) students’ understanding of plagiarism in academic
writing through qualitative data collection methods. After the focus group
filled in the open-ended questionnaire, they were exposed to two sets of texts each
containing an original, a plagiarized and non-plagiarized copy. The copy in the
first set featured mainly word-for-word plagiarism while the copy in the second
set was plagiarized in terms of illicit paraphrasing. The students were asked
to identify whether there is any plagiarism in each copy and assess the texts
regarding their acceptability in the format of an interview and think-aloud
protocols. The results of the open-ended questionnaire and interviews were
compared revealing that although all the students were able to define
plagiarism correctly, most of them failed to identify it in the written text.
The study also uncovered discrepancies in how the students view the
aforementioned types of plagiarism.

Keywords

Paraphrasing and unacknowledged copying, plagiarism, scientific writing, think-aloud protocols, undergraduate research experience

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