Mahmood Reza Atai; Esmat Babaii; Elahe Fazlollahi
Abstract
The problem of plagiarism has been a hot issue of concern to the academic community in recent years. In this study, we probed the factors which overtly or covertly lead to plagiarism growth among graduate students of agricultural sciences in Iran. To this end, we investigated the perceptions of 187 graduate ...
Read More
The problem of plagiarism has been a hot issue of concern to the academic community in recent years. In this study, we probed the factors which overtly or covertly lead to plagiarism growth among graduate students of agricultural sciences in Iran. To this end, we investigated the perceptions of 187 graduate students in the field of agricultural sciences towards: the nature of plagiarism, different forms of plagiarism, and the underlying motives for plagiarism through a questionnaire. Academic literacies model was adopted as a reference point to uncover those injustices in the educational sector deterring the literacy development. The results revealed that most graduate students of agricultural sciences had a rather good understanding to the nature of plagiarism, and considered it as an unacceptable serious problem which should be avoided. Nonetheless, in marked contrast, their perceptions towards different forms of plagiarism unfolded further doubts on their understanding to who should be known as author and who is deserved to be awarded authorship. The results revealed that recursive practice of a long list of violations, seemingly, made the academics blind towards their faulty nature, pushed back the borders of literacy and made them common academic norm. The findings further indicated that plagiarism grows hand in hand with deviation from scientific values and devaluation of science, marketization of science and violations of academic commitments, and politicization of science and alienation from the universal standards. The findings could provide useful implications for revisiting and reforming the educational policies in general and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs in particular.
Naser Rashidi; Mohamad Rahimi; Farzaneh Dehghan
Volume 3, Issue 2 , May 2016, , Pages 96-81
Abstract
Writing academic texts is a challenging endeavour for novice L2 writers, which causes them to rely heavily on the original texts. Some studies have differentiated intentional acts of fraud (like plagiarism) from patchwriting which they claim is unintentional source text reliance. However, others have ...
Read More
Writing academic texts is a challenging endeavour for novice L2 writers, which causes them to rely heavily on the original texts. Some studies have differentiated intentional acts of fraud (like plagiarism) from patchwriting which they claim is unintentional source text reliance. However, others have a negative view toward it. The present study explores L2 graduate student writers and their professors' perspectives about these different writing practices and how they may work for or against developing professional writing expertise in a discipline. Survey questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data. The results were analysed through calculating frequencies and percentages as well as inductive data analysis for transcribed interviews. The results showed that many graduate students used patchwriting in their attempts to write academic texts unintentionally and intuitively. The reasons identified for patchwriting were students' lack of confidence to write independently, inability to paraphrase or fear of not expressing the writer's message thoroughly, and, in some cases, the writers' intention to get around plagiarism detection softwares. However, both students and their instructors had negative views about patchwriting. They believed that writing strategies like patchwriting could not lead to professional writing practices in a discipline. More importantly, the students seemed to continue this practice all through their studies, which may be a sign of not receiving enough instruction and feedback in this regard. The role of explicit teaching is emphasized in making students familiar with the differences between paraphrasing and patchwriting.
