VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------- HOÀNG THỊ HỒNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE STATE OF PLAGIARISM IN WRITING ASSIGNMENTS AMONG THIRD-YEAR STUDENTS MAJORED IN ENGLISH IN ONE OF VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITIES AND SOME PREVENTIVE TEACHING STRATERGIES (ĐIỀU TRA VỀ TÌNH TRẠNG ĐẠO VĂN TRONG VIẾT TIỂU LUẬN CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGÀNH TIẾNG ANH TẠI MỘT TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CỦA VIỆT NAM VÀ GỢI Ý MỘT SỐ CHIẾN LƯỢC GIẢNG DẠY) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi, 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------- HOÀNG THỊ HỒNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE STATE OF PLAGIARISM IN WRITING ASSIGNMENTS AMONG THIRD-YEAR STUDENTS MAJORED IN ENGLISH IN ONE OF VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITIES AND SOME PREVENTIVE TEACHING STRATERGIES (ĐIỀU TRA VỀ TÌNH TRẠNG ĐẠO VĂN TRONG VIẾT TIỂU LUẬN CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGÀNH TIẾNG ANH TẠI MỘT TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CỦA VIỆT NAM VÀ GỢI Ý MỘT SỐ CHIẾN LƯỢC GIẢNG DẠY) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dr. Phạm Thị Thanh Thuỳ Hanoi, 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I, hereby, certify the thesis entitled “An investigation into the state of plagiarism in writing assignments among third-year students majored in English in one of Vietnamese Universities and some preventive teaching strategies” is the result of my own research for the Minor Degree of Master of Arts at the University of Language and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, and this thesis has not, wholly or partially, been submitted for any degree at any other universities or institutions.
Hanoi, 2014 HOANG THI HONG i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge my deep gratitude to all those who have supported me in doing this independent study. Firstly, I would like to express my greatest appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Pham Thi Thanh Thuy, for her valuable time and useful guidance towards the completion of this study. Secondly, I am extremely grateful to the staff members of the Faculty of Post - graduate studies for their helpful lectures.
My special thanks are also sent to my lecturers, my friends, my classmates, as well as my colleagues for their invaluable comments and criticism and also for their continued interest and encouragements. Thirdly, I appreciate the assistance and cooperation given to me by lecturers and students at National Economics University. Without their sincere participation, this paper would not have been possible. Last but not least, I want to express my deepest gratitude to my beloved people, my parents, my husband and my children for their love, care, tolerance and encouragement.
ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This article explores the issue of plagiarism from the perspective of students studying in Vietnamese Universities. The study was designed to investigate students’ awareness regarding plagiarism. The writer also attempted to measure the state of plagiarism among university students in terms of the forms and the seriousness of plagiarism. She then wanted to identify some preventive teaching strategies to improve academic practice (including academic writing and referencing skills) based on the results gained.
To some extents, findings from the study indicate that the students had inadequate understanding about plagiarism definition and its notion, plagiarism policies, and penalty for acts of plagiarism. Therefore, they had committed most of common forms of plagiarism: using paraphrased, summarized, quoted texts without showing the original sources, inventing biblography or data, and submitting online papers and handing as their owns. Level of seriosness of plagiarism acts was varying from copying some key words, sentences to entire of their assignments. The most serious case was that some students submitted an online work and handed in as their own.
The number of this case is not high; still it is also an alarm to educators. However, most of students were unintentional plagiarists due to objective causes like their unawareness of plagiarism, lack of proof reading, poor writing academic skills and carelessness when taking an assignment. Some others committed plagiarism intentionally because of some subjective causes like their laziness, bad time management, desire of higher grades, pressure from family and friends. Nevertheless, the problem of plagiarism should not fall on the shoulders of the students alone.
The instructor should take responsibility for neither checking for plagiarism nor teaching about ethics, which is one course rarely offered in universities. The solution would be resolved from the top, teachers should be a good model of plagiarism fighters. In this minor thesis, the researcher would like to offer some preventive teaching strategies against plagiarism. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as Foreign Language FLF: Foreign Language Faculty NEU: National Economics University Ss: Students Ts: Teachers iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES Number Name Page 1.
Figure 1: Frequency of having students do writing 19 assignment 2. Figure 2: Difficulties students encounter when they write an 20 assignment 3. Figure 3: Students’ awareness of plagiarism policy 21 4. Figure 4: Students’ awareness of plagiarism penalty 22 5.
Figure 5: Teachers and students’ attitude towards plagiarism 23 at the university 6. Figure 6: Teachers’ and students’ experience of plagiarism 24 incidences 7. Figure 7: Common forms of plagiarism that students often 25 commit 8. Figure 8: Seriousness of student plagiarism at the university 29 9.
Figure 9: Reasons of student plagiarism 30 10. Figure 10: What the students should do to avoid plagiarism 31 11. Figure 11: What the teachers should do to reduce plagiarism 32 12. Figure 12: What the university should do to limit plagiarism 33 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENT DECLARATION.
III LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .IV LIST OF FIGURES. V TABLE OF CONTENT .VI PART A: INTRODUCTION. Purpose of the study:. Scope of the study.
Significance of the study:. Design of the study. 5 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND .1 What is plagiarism? .3 Forms of plagiarism .4 Why students tend to plagiarize? .5 Penalty for student plagiarism .2 Review previous studies. 11 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .2 Discourse analysis: analysis of students’ essays .3 Data collection procedure.
16 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.1 The setting of the study .2 Participants’ background information .4 Data analytical units. 18 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS .1 The difficulties students encounter when taking a writing assignment .1 Difficulties in doing a writing assignment .2 Students’ awareness of plagiarism .3 Forms of plagiarism committed by students .4 Seriousness of student plagiarism .5 Reasons for student plagiarism .6 Ways to reduce student plagiarism. 33 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .1 Students’ awareness of the notion of plagiarism and its penalty .2 Main forms of plagiarism caused by students .3 Reasons for student plagiarism .2 To the teachers .3 To university policy maker. Suggestions for further research.
I APPENDIX 1a: SURVEY ON PLAGIARISM IN WRITING. I vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com APPENDIX 1b: SURVEY ON PLAGIARISM IN WRITING.IV APPENDIX 2 – LIST OF TABLES. VII viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale “It’s just so easy.
You see something interesting on the Web; you drag your mouse over it, click on ‘copy’, open your word processor, and paste it in. A matter of moments. Why not just incorporate it into what you are writing? Who is to know?” (Eastment, 2005: 183) Such of act is considered as plagiarizing. Plagiarism is regarded as a serious and growing problem which significantly diminishes the academic integrity of university education.
In today’s digital age with breathtaking advancements in the electronic storage, search and dissemination of information, plagiarism is rapidly becoming a crisis. The jaw-dropping amount of documents available on the Internet makes plagiarism so easy that students find it difficult to resist the temptation. They tend to work late at night, do some “copy-and-paste” on a paper due the next morning. Unfortunately, even when this apparent student ‘cut-and-paste’ mindset is acknowledged, the extent of plagiarism and academic misconduct is likely much worse than it appears.
Recently, numerous studies have shown that plagiarism and other types of academic fraud are increasing among undergraduate students. In a study conducted in 2001, McCabe posits, based on students’ self-reported attitudes that high school students may not consider cutting-and-pasting from the Internet to be cheating. With the same result, Kraus (2002:84) expands this notion by being “convinced that a rapidly growing number [of students] simply do not see plagiarism as wrong.’ It is students’ unawareness that leads to the number of plagiarists in universities is growing dramatically. In a recent article published by the Center for Academic Integrity (CAI), Professor Don McCabe claims that “On most campuses, 70% of students admit to some cheating” while “Internet plagiarism is a growing concern” because although only “10% of students admitted to engage in such behavior in 1999”, almost “40% admitted to it in 2005” (Mc Cabe, 2005).
In Vietnam, the number of plagiarist coming to light has increased dramatically recently. In a recent study, QT789 Groups (2013) state that 58% students consider 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com plagiarism as normal, up to 75% students has plagiarized at least once at university. Plagiarism among Vietnamese students is so popular that a foreign scholar has claimed “[students in] Vietnam has a cheating cultural” (cited in Ngo Tu Lap, 2013). In the talk show ‘copy-paste’ (SIB, 2014), Hoang Minh Luong shares the fact that in Vietnam, it is not surprising to find numerous assignments or even graduated papers ready to be used in photocopy shops.
Students just buy some and make some changes and hand in as their own. For him “plagiarism is the intellectual corruption or intellectual thief.” Being a high school teacher, the author hardly has any chance to access the academic settings to give a large point of view on plagiarism in professional writing. Due to her desire of investigating the real situation in higher educational environment, she managed to carry the minor research, entitled “An investigation into the state of plagiarism in writing assignments among third-year students majored in English in one of Vietnamese Universities and some preventive teaching strategies”. In the light of this significant students’ viewpoint, and the acknowledgement of how serious a problem academic plagiarism is, the writer mentions to do a scrutinizing research on state of plagiarism as well as students and teachers’ awareness of plagiarism with the hope of providing additional insight.
Purpose of the study: The study aims at providing additional insight about plagiarism among students NEU. By doing so, the writer attempts to suggest some of preventative teaching strategies in order to limit this academic misconduct. In order to achieve this aim, the study has to fulfill the following objectives: - obtaining students’ awareness at one of Vietnamese Universities regarding plagiarism. - investigating the state of plagiarism at university in terms of forms and seriousness - identifying some preventative teaching strategies for raising awareness of students and improving academic practice 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Research questions In order to find out whether the students have a fulfill understanding about plagiarism, especially in academic writing, and the state of plagiarism among Vietnamese students. This study was designed to highlight the following research questions: - What is students’ awareness of plagiarism at the university? - What are some common forms of plagiarism committed by university students? - What are some ways to raise awareness of plagiarism among students? - What are some preventative teaching strategies in order to reduce plagiarism among students? 4.