Abstract
Although much of the research into source use by international students has tended to focus on issues of plagiarism, there has recently been recognition that their difficulties in this respect may be more pedagogical than moral. However, much remains to be known about the nature of such students? source use. In order to throw light on the ways in which novice L2 writers use source material in their writing and to understand what difficulties they experience, this paper reports on a small case study involving a group of Japanese postgraduate students. Analysis of five Pre-Master?s dissertations written by these students, as well as interviews conducted with the writers, revealed that they varied in their ability to handle source material effectively. In many cases, their use of source material appeared to be symptomatic of weak authorial stance and apparent lack of a clear argument. Based on these findings, the study concludes with the recommendation that instruction on the use of source material focus to a greater extent on its rhetorical function in constructing knowledge.
Highlights
Writing using source materials is a key aspect of academic literacy and a major means of assessment, for those studying at postgraduate level
Because referencing source material is such a critical part of postgraduate writing, many student handbooks, style guides, departmental websites and English for Academic Purposes (EAP)courses include guidance on it. Despite this plethora of available guidance, it remains a common complaint that students, those writing in a second language (Deckert, 1993; Gilmore, Strickland, Timmerman, Maher, & Feldon, 2010; Marshall & Garry, 2006), still produce work in which source material is so poorly referenced that it leaves the writers vulnerable to accusations of plagiarism (Campbell, 1990; Howard, 1995; Keck, 2006; Pecorari, 2010; Shi, 2010)
Kai used quotation the least, but rather than indicating that he used effective paraphrasing instead, this is probably a reflection of the low number of references to source material of any kind in his work. He used the lowest number of citations of anyone in the group, and the figure of 4.5% shown in Table 2 represents just one single quotation
Summary
Writing using source materials is a key aspect of academic literacy and a major means of assessment, for those studying at postgraduate level. Because referencing source material is such a critical part of postgraduate writing, many student handbooks, style guides, departmental websites and English for Academic Purposes (EAP)courses include guidance on it Despite this plethora of available guidance, it remains a common complaint that students, those writing in a second language (Deckert, 1993; Gilmore, Strickland, Timmerman, Maher, & Feldon, 2010; Marshall & Garry, 2006), still produce work in which source material is so poorly referenced that it leaves the writers vulnerable to accusations of plagiarism (Campbell, 1990; Howard, 1995; Keck, 2006; Pecorari, 2010; Shi, 2010). Research since the mid-1990s (e.g. Howard, 1995, 1999; Pecorari & Shaw, 2012; Pennycook, 1998 and many others) has
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