Students’ Awareness towards the Act of Plagiarism in Academic Writing Among ESL Undergraduates in a Malaysian Private University
Keywords:
Plagiarism, Academic Writing, Perception, ESL undergraduates, MalaysiaAbstract
The act of plagiarism is commonly exercised among students especially in the tertiary education scene. With the current advancement of technology, the act of plagiarism is quite evident as students are able to acquire someone’s work and claiming it as theirs easily. The long-term effect of this issue is quite worrying as it will affect the quality of the graduates we are producing specifically when it comes to their academic integrity. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate ESL undergraduates’ awareness towards the act of plagiarism in their academic writing. A questionnaire on student’s plagiarism awareness was adopted to elicit data in order to explore this matter further in the context of Malaysian private university’s students. A total of 104 undergraduates underwent academic writing class participated in the survey. The results showed that in general, the students were aware and did have knowledge regarding both concepts of plagiarism and the characteristics of such act. Due to the awareness, the results also showed that more than half of the respondents claimed to not commit plagiarism when they write for their academic materials. The current study also looked into the relationship between gender and the frequency of plagiarism act and the findings revealed that the relationship was not statistically significant. The implication of this study could be used to help the university in getting better insight to prevent plagiarism hence promoting zero plagiarism culture among the undergraduates.
References
Bahadori M. & Izadi M. (2012) Plagiarism: Concept, Factors and Solutions. Iranian Journal of Military Medicine. 14(3) : 168-177.
Barnhart, R. K., Steinmetz, S. (1988). Chambers Dictionary of Etymology the origins and development of over 25,000 English words. Chambers. Edinburgh, UK.
Beheshti, S.M. (2011). Plagiarism. Tehran 2011 [Feb, 7]; Available from: http://www.tebyan.ne.
DeVoss, D. & Rosati, A.C. (2002). “It wasn’t me, was it?” Plagiarism and the Web Computers and Composition. 19(2) :191-203.
Fa'iezah, L. U. (2009). Gender differences in plagiarism attitudes among Indonesian university students in Perth Australia. Journal of Education, 1(2).
Fialkoff F. There’s no excuse for plagiarism. Library Journal. 1993;118((17)):56.
Hassan, N. & Khan, N.H. (2018). Internet and Increasing Issues of Plagiarism. Shrinkhla Ek Shodhparak Vaicharik Patrika. 5(12).
Hosny, M. & Fatima, S. (2014). Attitude ozangf Students Towards Cheating and Plagiarism: University Case Study. Journal of Applied Sciences. 14(8). 748-757.
Learning Support Network (2005). Academic Integrity at Curtin: Student Guidelines for Avoiding Plagiarism. Curtin University of Technology.
Ma, H.J., Wan, G. & Lu, E. Y. (2008). Digital Cheating and Plagiarism in Schools. Theory into Practice, 47(3), 197-203.
Mc Cabe, D. L. (1996). What We Know about Cheating in College. Change, January/ February: 29-33.
McCabe, D. L. (2005). Cheating among College and University Students: A North American Perspective. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 1(1), 10-11.
Plagiarism | University of Oxford. (2020). Retrieved 2 October 2020, from https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism
Pyer, H. S. (2000) Plagiarism. Available from: at: http://online.northumbria. ac.uk.
Singh M.K.M. (2015). Malaysian Public University Students’ Attitude Towards Plagiarism. Journal of Language and Communication, 2(2), 297-309.
Starovoytova, D. and Namango, S. (2016). Viewpoint of Undergraduate Engineering Students on Plagiarism. Journal of Education& Practice, ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper), ISSN 2222-288X (Online), 7(31).
Straw, D. (2002). The plagiarism of generation ‘why not?’. Community College Week, 14(24), 4-7.
Sureda-Negre, J., Comas-Forgas, R. & Oliver-Trobat, M.F. (2015). Plagio académico entre alumnado de secundaria y bachillerato: Diferencias en cuanto al género y la procrastinación. Comunicar, 44(22).
Ting, S. H. (2013, June 4-5). Academic writing: Citation is troublesome and plagiarism is no big deal. Proceedings of International Conference on Social Science Research
What is Plagiarism? (2017, May 18). Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://plagiarism.org/article/what-is-plagiarism
Whiteman, S. A. & Gordon, J. L. (2001). The price of an A: an educator’s responsibility to academic honesty. English Journal, 91(2), 25-31.
Whitley, B. E., Nelson, A. B., & Jones, C. J. (1999). Gender Differences in Cheating Attitudes and Classroom Behavior: A Meta-Analysis. Sex Roles, 41: 657-677.
Wilhoit, S. (1994). Helping students avoid plagiarism. College Teaching, 42(4), 161-164.
Yusof, D. S. M., & Masrom, U. K. (2011). Malaysian students’ understanding of plagiarism. Malay, 35, 72-9
Zangenehmadar, Samaneh and Tan, Bee Hoon (2014). ESL undergraduates' perception of plagiarism in academic writing. Journal of Language and Communication, 1 (1). pp. 75-86. ISSN 2289-649X.
