Investigating Some Main Causes and Reasons of Writing Plagiarism in an EFL Context

Abstract

The present study aimed at exploring the causes and reasons of the EFL learners’ plagiarism. To this end, 150 females and males TEFL students from State and Azad universities in Iran, participated the study. A questionnaire developed by Rezanejad and Rezaeibased (2013) and a semi-structured interview which were piloted on a similar sample before administering were used as the instruments of the study. To triangulate the findings, for the qualitative part of the study, a semi-structured interview including 16 questions was run with 10 learners to collect the quantitative data at the end of the study. Based on the findings of this study, it was revealed that most of the students were aware of the concept of plagiarism and had the same definition of it. Moreover, their professors used the Internet and search engines to detect plagiarism and warned them about plagiarism continuously. The students claimed inadequate information about how not to plagiarize and less command over English language to be the main reason of plagiarism. They heard of it from their university professors, then in workshops or seminars on plagiarism, and finally from their high school teachers. Moreover, they got familiar with the concept of plagiarism through university professors, friends or family members, newspapers and magazines, Internet, TV, and radio. The implications are discussed in terms of raising learners' awareness about plagiarism in EFL contexts.

Readymade Solutions and Students’ Appetite for Plagiarism as Challenges for Online Learning

“…It is a source for increasing the efficiency of teaching [38] and an opportunity for students [20]. Zarfsaz and Ahmadi [9] underline that the main source of information on plagiarism is the Internet in the case of students. On the other hand, the skills required to use the Internet also represent tools for the detection of unethical academic practices [4].…”

“…As for undergraduate students, their appropriation of the materials that are available online is considered plagiarism even if the authors of those are not known. Either way, the increase in students' propensity for plagiarism is one of the effects associated with their wide unrestricted access to the Internet [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

La honestidad académica como criterio de evaluación de los trabajos del alumnado universitario

“…One of the main lines of research developed in recent focuses on determining the role of teachers in preventing academic dishonesty, warning students of its consequences, providing skills to conduct a self-assessment of their own progress or even creating opportunities to review drafts of their academic work (Zarfsaz & Ahmadi, 2018), which raises the question of whether these aspects are taken into account in the evaluation process.…”

“…In the light of the above, items related to the detection of differences in the evaluation of teachers between plagiarized and nonproprietary academic works and even between students who have submitted a plagiarized work and those who have not, have gradually been introduced into the instruments of plagiarism (Zarfsaz & Ahmadi, 2018). There are also authors who have created rubrics to evaluate academic writing works combined with antiplagiarism tools (Razi, 2015).…”

El Alumnado Universitario Ante Políticas Institucionales Y De Aula Sobre Plagio

“…Se llevó a cabo un estudio cuantitativo, de corte transversal, descriptivo, correlacional e inferencial, tratando de describir el fenómeno en su contexto natural y mediante sus componentes principales. La selección de este método es coherente con investigaciones previas que analizan aspectos como la integridad académica del alumnado (Sureda-Negre, Comas-Forgas y Oliver-Trobat, 2015), su percepción, experiencia y actitud hacia la comisión de prácticas deshonestas (Cebrián-Robles, Raposo-Rivas, Cebrián-de-la-Serna y Sarmiento-Campos, 2018; Tayan, 2017) o las causas y razones que les llevan a cometer plagio (Zarfsaz y Ahmadi, 2017).…”