Research On Academic Plagiarism In Theses Of English Postgraduates

Academic plagiarism requires urgent attention for it will hurt the academic community in the long run and prevent the academic exchange. Complicated as it is due to lack of unanimous definition and operation, plagiarism has been studied early from various perspectives in the foreign academic community. Plagiarism in ESL students is investigated thoroughly. Foreign scholars have distinguished unintentional plagiarism from intentional plagiarism and argued that most ESL students are free from the receptive intention. Unintentional plagiarism is interpreted in various ways. The researches show students’ contradictory perceptions and incorrect interpretations of plagiarism, and most teachers have not reached agreement on how to deal with plagiarism though regarding it as inappropriate. However, in China less is achieved because plagiarism is such a sensitive issue that it is either understated or avoided. Plagiarism is usually attributed to academic immorality and distortion of values and the researches are not conducted on different disciplines, theses levels and writing languages. A few empirical researches are confined to questionnaires and interviews, while most researches are based on reviews. The present study conducts an empirical research of the plagiarism and aims to provide some pedagogical implications for teaching in second language academic writing, and promote the cultivation of academic literacy and the development of academic writing research.In the present study, academic plagiarism is defined as inappropriate use of source text or violation of citation norms. Considering that plagiarism is not a simple black and white issue, several methods are employed in the study. Having selected ten writing samples from Literature Review part of ten finished English postgraduates theses, the present study adopts text analysis to explore the various citation practices on the basis of self-built coding scheme and the extent of inappropriately repeated words to describe the situation of plagiarism. Seven inappropriate citation strategies are analyzed in detail. To probe deeper into the core of the academic misdeed, auxiliary questionnaires and interview are conducted to respectively know the students’ perceptions of and attitudes toward plagiarism, the reasons for plagiarism and supervisors’ attitudes toward students’ plagiarism.The text analysis of present study shows an astonishing picture. Academic plagiarism is prevalent in the writing samples, with 56.5% of the total citations inappropriate and 55.2% of the words on average inappropriately used. Among the problematic citations, invalid citation, undocumented reduplication, undocumented secondary citation and translation account for about 90% in total, and the students are inclined to copy the foreign monographs and journal articles, and translate Chinese counterparts. The extent of inappropriately used words in the samples ranges from 26.3% to 77.0%. Examining the similarity level of each citation,51.3% of the problematic citations are 100% identical to the sources, and 22.0% are at the similarity level of 85%-100%, which means that students do not deep process the source text.Questionnaires and interview are designed to reveal more about plagiarism in the postgraduates’theses. Most of the subjects hold negative attitude toward plagiarism but they have difficulties in applying the citation norms.84.1% of the subjects have learned about source use, and over half of them learn by self-study from the citation norms in the sources.68.2% hold absolutely negative attitude toward plagiarism while 27.3% view it as rather serious and 4.6% deem it nothing serious. The original author of the source is counted as the most possible victim by 84.1% of the subjects and the second most possible victim varies from the plagiarizers themselves, the classmates and the universities. Students’ understanding of the citation practices is poor and inadequate and they can only distinguish some of the inappropriate citation practices. In the interview plagiarism is ascribed to inadequate instructions on correct academic writing norms and limited language and academic competence by most interviewees, and some think it is mainly due to academic immorality. Plagiarism may be caused by some other reasons such as poor understanding of plagiarism concept, the open online sources, poor time management, and cultural differences. It is also found that academic plagiarism is not attached importance to by supervisors.Some pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies are proposed to promote the academic writing teaching and academic research development.