Abstract
The paper describes an action research being developed by the researcher to address the issue of plagiarism and assist tertiary students to master second-language (L2) writing using sources in a higher education institute (HEI) in Oman. It recruited 16 undergraduate students from two classes who undertook an L2 writing course. To identify their needs of citation skills and develop a follow-up action plan, the students were initially asked to write a referenced-based essay, and then they were interviewed to explore their knowledge and skills of citation. Accordingly, specific amount of tasks were developed and conducted in 10 weeks. After implementing the tasks, the participants were asked to write another referenced-based essay and then they were interviewed for the second time to explore any change they had in knowledge and skills of citation. Findings showed that instances of plagiarism significantly decreased in their second essay; however, there was a modest overall improvement in cases of misinterpreted citations across the students who had low level of English proficiency. Implications for teaching citation skills in academic L2 writing contexts are discussed.
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Solutions or tasks offered in previous research to counteract the issue of plagiarism were derived from some general recommendations suggested by other researchers for improving citation skills of L2 students (see Wette, 2010) and not directly based on participants’ specific needs of citation skills. This study though necessitates that more work is needed to gain more holistic understanding of plagiarism and offer best suitable strategies to counteract it. This paper is deeply and narrowly focused on a reason-based approach to plagiarism management; to be more precise, it selected certain approaches to plagiarism management based on the specific reasons behind students’ plagiarizing.
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Appendices
Appendices
Appendix 1: Report Log 1 Template
Report Log 1 | |
Name: | |
Report Topic: | |
Report Question: |
Before you start your report – think about what you will need to find out about.
Look at your essay plan – what do you need to research? What do you need to know more about?
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Write down the key words or questions.
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Write down where you are going to look for this information. You can look in more than one place for information on each key word or question. Think about using academic books – History/Biology/etc., journals, magazines, newspapers, Internet websites, dictionaries, encyclopedias. You cannot use Wikipedia, blogs, forums, personal communication.
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Write down details of sources: author’s last name (or editor’s last name), initial, date, title, name of publication in case of journals, magazines, publisher in case of books, place of publication, retrieved from URL).
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Write down your reference list. (You may use a citation generator website.)
Appendix 2: Report Log 2 Template
Report Log 2 | |
Name: | |
Report Topic: | |
Report Question: |
Before you start your report – look at your essay plan – what do you need to research? What do you need to support each main idea, key words or question?
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Write down the key words or questions.
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Copy-paste any supporting details including examples, evidences or discussion you find for your main idea, key words or question.
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Write down the sources used for each supporting detail.
Appendix 3: Report Log 3 Template
Report Log 3 | |
Name: | |
Report Topic: | |
Report Question: |
Write down the annotation:
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(1)
Provide a quote, or paraphrase or summarize the ideas that you plan to include in your report. You need also to provide your comments on those ideas.
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(2)
Format the technical aspects of direct (quoting) and indirect (summarizing and paraphrasing) strategies of documenting sources
Appendix 4: Referencing checklist for essay analysis
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1.
Are all references used in the essay reliable?
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2.
Is there a complete reference list for the essay?
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3.
Are references consistently formatted in accordance to the APA style?
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4.
Are all statements that are neither the author’s ideas nor common knowledge cited?
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5.
Do details in in-text citations match the details in the reference list (e.g. spellings of author names, abbreviations of author names correctly, publication years)?
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6.
Are all works in the reference list cited in the text?
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7.
For paraphrases and summaries:
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Do all in-text citations include the author and year?
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Is there a comma between the author and year for parenthetical citations?
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Is the date in parentheses after the author for narrative citations?
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8.
For direct quotation:
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Do short quotations appear in double quotation marks?
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Do long quotations appear in the block quotation format (i.e. double-spaced, indented 0.5" from the left margin, without quotation marks from around the block)?
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Do all citations include the author, year, and page number?
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Are there commas between the author and year and between the year and page number for parenthetical citations?
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Does the page number appear in parentheses after the quotation for narrative citations?
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AL Harrasi, K.T.S. Develo** a needs-based plagiarism management in second-language writing in a higher education institute: practice-oriented research. Instr Sci 51, 1079–1115 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-023-09628-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-023-09628-6