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 ...
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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 ...
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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.
Saeed Rezaei; Masoumeh Estaji; Mahdi Hasanpour
Volume 2, Issue 1 , February 2015, , Pages 71-43
Abstract
One of the most salient written academic outputs a university student has the opportunity to create is a thesis which is regarded as “a complex student-produced research genre” (Lee & Casal, 2014). In order to compare the rhetorical features and preferences of distinct discourse communities ...
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One of the most salient written academic outputs a university student has the opportunity to create is a thesis which is regarded as “a complex student-produced research genre” (Lee & Casal, 2014). In order to compare the rhetorical features and preferences of distinct discourse communities and evaluate academic writing, a special and long-term attention, on the part of the writers, is required for analyzing the metadiscourse features of the texts (Hyland, 2004). To this end, the present study examined the differences in the use, type, and frequency of interactional metadiscourse markers in theses written by M.A. applied linguistics graduates including 10 males and 10 females from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. The selected corpus was analyzed using Hyland’s (2005) interactional model of metadiscourse. The data were explored through a manual corpus analysis method using Adobe PDF reader software. Moreover, a Chi-Square statistical measure was run to examine whether there were any significant differences in the use of metadiscourse markers in different thesis chapters and across different genders. The results revealed that although there were some subtle differences in the frequency and types of these metadiscourse markers, there was no statistically significant difference between two genders in the use of interactional metadiscourse markers. Besides, it was concluded that there was a significant relationship between the chapters of theses and the use of metadiscourse markers. The findings of this study render some pedagogical implications for writing courses at M.A. and PhD levels in the realms of TEFL and ESP.
