Plagiarism

Much of the literature related to international students focuses on plagiarism, which is to be expected since language proficiency and familiarity with American-style scholarship are prominent issues. International students, particularly those who are non-native English

of these reasons are shared by university students globally (e.g., poor time management skills), but some are mostly experienced by international students (e.g., varying levels of English

proficiency). Hayes and Introna (2005) conducted a study in which they interviewed students in a master’s program in the United Kingdom; their focus groups included students from 13

different countries, including India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, Greece, Brazil and others. They found that unintentional plagiarism was often linked to a student’s research process. For example, students take notes as they research, sometimes writing down text exactly as it appeared in the original source. When they use these notes to write a paper, students might simply use these exact phrases, not remembering these chunks of text are not their own words. Students in this study also expressed confusion with why they would change the words of an author who has already stated an idea so well, and claimed that there are “only so many ways that issues could be written” (Hayes & Introna, 2005, p. 221). Duff, Rogers, and Harris (2006) found that plagiarism is often unintentional and the result of poor citation skills.

International students may copy text because it saves time, helps them learn the necessary new vocabulary, and keeps them out of trouble and able to pass a course. For these students, “copying reflects less an intentional violation of cultural code than a survival measure in the face of perceived difficulties or deficiencies” (Currie, 1998, p. 2). In an English speaking institution, international students are asked to produce academic writing in a language in which they may be barely fluent. Often their “heavy reliance on copying seemed to stem not from a conceptual misunderstanding, but rather from a lack of familiarity with academic writing,” according to Amsberry (2009, p. 36). Pennycook (1996) notes that these students may lack confidence, because they feel that they have no ownership over the English language.

3.3.1 Patchwriting. Patchwriting is a technique often used by students, international and domestic alike, who have difficulty creating acceptable academic writing and/or

copied exactly but that have nevertheless been borrowed from another source, with some

changes” (Howard, 1995, p. 799). In other words, students select a relevant section of text from a source, and rearrange sentences, remove some phrases, choose replacement synonyms, etc. To use this technique is to commit plagiarism by most institutions’ definitions, but some scholars have called for a different view of this practice. Some view patchwriting as a crucial stage of learning to write in a scholarly manner, and an indication that the writer understands the source. Pecorari (2003) calls this “source-dependent composition,” which is used by students as they “learn to write in a new discourse, and that causes them to depend heavily on the language of their sources” (p. 266). According to Hayes and Introna (2005), patchwriting “implies a serious attempt to make sense of, and engage with, the material,” and should be viewed as part of the learning process (p. 226).

3.3.2 Problems with plagiarism. Some scholars and educators have found the

concept of plagiarism to be problematic. First, plagiarism has been oversimplified by professors, universities, academic integrity councils, and many others. It can be quickly defined as the stealing of another’s ideas, but it is just not that simple. Currie (1998), who spent a semester conducting weekly interviews with a second language writer as she toiled to produce acceptable academic writing, notes that the “traditional and oversimplified view of plagiarism [fails] to account for the layers, complexities, and ambiguities embedded in the production of text” (p. 1). Where is the line between inspiration and theft? Is there truly “nothing new under the sun?”

Secondly, plagiarism is just not that easy to identify. For example, the phrase “nothing new under the sun” appeared in the previous paragraph without a citation, because it can be

considered a known idiom and thus categorized under common knowledge. But this phrase might not be considered common knowledge by an Egyptian graduate student writing a literature review or a Chinese professor grading research papers. There are many guidelines to be interpreted for identifying plagiarism, and few clear rules. Because plagiarism is not so easily

identifiable, and because it is often considered an issue of honor, it is also difficult to approach objectively (Pennycook, 1994, p. 278). Passing judgment on plagiarizers, a task assigned to professors, administrators and honor councils, is no easy task.

The academy’s attitude towards plagiarism “unjustifiably elevates a Western concept to the status of norm” (Currie, 1998, p. 1). The current conceptions of authorship and text ownership in American higher education are Western and have not always been in vogue; these are modern ideas (Pennycook, 1996). Globally, the West may play the biggest role in advancing academia, but this does not mean that Western ideas of scholarship are the only or best ideas. Bloch (2008) cautions against presenting Western and non-Western ideas about ownership of information as a dichotomy, because it is easy for international students to interpret “your way is different” as “your way is inferior.” East (2006), borrowing an anthropological concept from Hall (1981), proposes that Australian higher education is a high context culture, “in which its members have come to implicitly understand the situation in which they operate” (p. 17). A professor may have an understanding of what constitutes plagiarism, but be unable to explain it to outsiders. In this case, international students are outsiders because they are not yet members of the culture.

Pennycook, a professor who has taught all over the world and published extensively on plagiarism and non-native English speaking students clearly articulates some of the problems with the way that many in academia view plagiarism. First, he points out that often publications that are identified as the result of original academic work actually depends on what he calls the “silent work” of others, including women (more so in the past), graduate students, and research assistants (Pennycook, 1996, p. 213). Who can identify with certainty where each idea in a paper or book originally developed? In fact, Pennycook often notes at the beginning of his writings that the ideas included in his own work are the result of conversations with many colleagues, and cannot be solely attributed to any one person. Second, issues of plagiarism and other forms of

academic dishonesty should be approached thoughtfully by educators. Certainly students, whether domestic or international, must learn to successfully and ethically navigate the

American higher education system, should this be where they choose to learn. However, as this chapter has established, the exact definition of plagiarism is often vague and open to

interpretation. As Pennycook (1996) states, “plagiarism needs to be understood within the particular cultural and historical context of its development, but it also needs to be understood relative to alternative cultural practices” (p. 218).