The Perceptions Of, Attitudes Towards And Reasons For Plagiarism In Academic Writing

Recently, "plagiarism" has attracted lots of attention both at home and abroad, however, there is little research at home addressing the issue of "plagiarism" from the perspective of second language acquisition when teachers, students and the whole society are troubled with this issue. To occupy the space, this empirical study is conducted. English major students, both undergraduates and postgraduates, are chosen as subjects. Questionnaires, textual materials and interviews are employed to discover students’ perceptions about, attitudes towards and reasons for plagiarism.82 students completed the questionnaires,16 students assigned marks and gave grading reasons in the textual materials and another 6 students participated in the interviews. Both quantitative data and qualitative data are collected to identify students’ knowledge in plagiarism and the significant differences between the two groups. It is hoped that this study can provide suggestions for second language academic writing.The results show that students are able to identify plagiarism and they have a good knowledge of the definition and boundaries of it. Postgraduates are proved to be better at the understanding of citation knowledge. And the higher students’ language level is, the better they are at judging wrong citation strategies are plagiarism. However, when it comes to plagiarism attitude, no significant difference is drawn and both groups become ambiguous:they neither agree nor disagree on the given plagiarism penalties. It is found through following interviews that they want teachers to lead students into the academic world through proper academic training to prevent plagiarism in the first place instead of simple punishments. Apart from the plagiarism reasons listed in the questionnaire, students also point out that poor teaching, inadequate guidance and assessment and unfavorable social environment can also cause plagiarism. Undergraduates are more inclined to attribute plagiarism to exterior reasons as "non-citation reasons" and "affective reasons", resulting in significant differences from postgraduates. And the higher students’ language level is, the less they are identified with the "affective reasons" and "non-citation reasons." Besides, gender difference is also found in the variable of "affective reason". The main reason for the differences between the two groups is that undergraduates and postgraduates have different academic background and learning content. Knowledge of citation and academic writing can be acquired through constant learning. Since postgraduates have studied for a longer period, they will tend to have richer academic experiences, thus better understanding of the citation knowledge in the questionnaire. While the gender difference in the questionnaire is caused by a disproportion of female students and male students. With many more ladies in English major, they are certainly faced with more peer pressure and care more about "decency" and "high mark".This paper recommends that academic curriculum be designed and set up based on undergraduates’and postgraduates’different academic needs. Beginners like undergraduates should be familiar with boundaries of plagiarism, citation rules and writing norms. Meanwhile, their research interest should be enlightened. Nevertheless, as for postgraduates, research methodologies should be imparted besides citation rules and writing norms. Postgraduates’ theory learning should go together with research practice through academic workshops or seminars. Moreover, sufficient guidance and proper assessment and feedback mechanism should be worked out.