Join Diane Pecorari (Professor of English and Head of Department at City University of Hong Kong) for a free webinar as she talks about Plagiarism and academic literacy: What EAP teachers need to know as part of the Academic ELT Online Conference, on Wednesday 30th October at 12 noon GMT.
Resources within academic institutions
The status of plagiarism as a bête noire of the academic world is indicated clearly by the large-scale resources which academic institutions devote to it. Significant amounts of staff time are spent on the administrative processes involved in investigating and punishing it. Text-matching tools (so called “plagiarism detection” tools) are contracted for at great expense. Preventative measures are also deployed, in the form of leaflets and fact sheets, or honour codes, or even more flamboyant measures.
It’s far from clear, though, how successful this investment of resources has been. Many people assert that there has been an increase in plagiarism, and while there is relatively little evidence speaking to this belief (Curtis & Vardanega, 2016, are one of the few exceptions), it’s certainly the case that plagiarism hasn’t disappeared from our universities.
Why do we still have plagiarism?
So why, despite intense and costly efforts, has plagiarism not vanished? A developing body of research (e.g., Angélil-Carter, 2000; Pecorari, 2003) has provided one reason. Plagiarism – or more accurately, writing which can be diagnosed as plagiarism – can be the result of inexperienced academic writers working their way into the academic discourse community. Eliminating plagiarism, then, is not just a matter of enforcing rules; it also involves helping novice writers become proficient members of the academic discourse community.
The idea that developing writing skills lie behind some apparent plagiarism is a familiar one too many teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). What, then, can teachers do to prepare their students for life outside the EAP classroom, where even the suspicion of plagiarism can have dramatic consequences? This session focuses on the skills students need to write conventionally, meet expectations, and therefore avoid accusations of plagiarism.
References
Angélil-Carter. (2000). Stolen Language? Plagiarism in Writing. London: Longman.
Curtis, G. J., & Vardanega, L. (2016). Is plagiarism changing over time? A 10-year time-lag study with three points of measurement. Higher Education Research & Development, 35(6), 1167–1179.
Pecorari, D. (2003). Good and original: Plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second-language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12, 317–345.
Biography
Diane Pecorari is Professor of English and Head of Department at City University of Hong Kong. Her research investigates aspects of English for academic purposes and second-language writing (including source use and plagiarism), and the widespread and growing phenomenon of English medium instruction.
She has designed and taught professional skills development courses for university teachers addressing questions such as how to work against plagiarism, how to promote students’ writing skills and how to teach effectively in the English-medium classroom.
Her publications include Teaching to Avoid Plagiarism (Open University Press) and Student Plagiarism in Higher Education (Society for Research into Higher Education & Routledge; with Philip Shaw).
Find out more and register now to join a series of free online webinars designed for teachers of academic English.
For other teasers of the conference, check out the talk teaser from Averil Coxhead.