Plagiarism in Academic Writing

Sheila Mitha

2223200033

4A

Reflective Writing #9

Plagiarism in Academic Writing

    Plagiarism in writing still happens in academic writing. Plagiarism is an act to copy or restate someone else’s work without inserting the sources. In this context, the researchers examine the issue of plagiarism within Japanese students’. They also examine from a broader perspective like social context. The study found several reasons why students decided to plagiarize.

    According to Masuko (2002), there are some students who consciously plagiarized other’s writing. Students who commit plagiarism mentioned that is because as a non-native speaker, the ability to summarize or paraphrase text is still insufficient to native speakers.  Aside from that, they are not very aware of plagiarism itself. There are also students who do not want to blame themselves, they feel that the teacher is also responsible for their actions. This happened because the teacher does not give enough time which is forced to make students do plagiarism. In addition, they have not taught students about the negative effects of plagiarism.

    From the findings stated above, the researchers believe that plagiarism is caused by socio-cultural-ideological disparities, a lack of L2 language ability, and inadequate training. Time pressure and lack of a clear role for professors in plagiarism detection are also affecting the students in plagiarism. Therefore, in order to avoid plagiarism in academic writing, students should learn and practice more to develop their English writing skills. Besides, to build their awareness of plagiarism, writing lessons must devote enough time to learning the kinds of writing that necessitate the integration and synthesis of sources as well as citation standards.

References

Masuko, V. L. (2002). Plagiarism in Academic Writing of Learners of English. Hermes, Journal of Linguistics, 24.