NESB and ESB students' attitudes and perceptions of plagiarism

Stephen Marshall,Maryanne Garry

doi:10.21913/ijei.v2i1.25

Abstract

Concern about plagiarism by students from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB) has grown apace with the increased numbers of international students attending western institutions. We present an exploration of student attitudes, perceptions and understandings of intellectual property, particularly plagiarism and copyright, and explore potential differences between NESB and ESB (English speaking background) students. The results indicate that while NESB students are more likely have engaged in plagiarism than ESB students, plagiarism overall is very common and reflects a combination of disrespect for material from the Internet and significant confusion about what actually constitutes plagiarism.

Highlights

There hardly seems to be a day that does not include the report of yet another incidence of plagiarism in either public or academic life
Behaviour that is clearly plagiarism is not correctly identified by 4% of English speaking background (ESB) and 11% of non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB) students, while behaviour which is correct is thought to be plagiarism by 10% of ESB and 6% of NESB students
28% of ESB and 57% of NESB students appear to feel that changing the words is sufficient to avoid plagiarism, while more subtle forms of plagiarism appear to be almost unrecognised by the students as forms of plagiarism

Summary

Introduction

There hardly seems to be a day that does not include the report of yet another incidence of plagiarism in either public or academic life. The existence of tools like Google has made detection easier and this may, in part, explain the perception that plagiarism has become more prevalent It remains unclear whether or not the incidence of plagiarism has increased (McCabe & Drinan, 1999; Park, 2003) and whether or not the Internet has contributed (Chester, 2001; Scanlon and Neumann, 2002). One such group to attract particular attention as plagiarists is students from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB). It may be that students from some cultures bring with them ideas of information use inconsistent with western academic traditions and norms of behaviour (Pennycook, 1996; Ninnes et al 1999; Introna et al 2003; Handa & Power, 2005), or there may be preconceptions applied by teachers that fail to appreciate the techniques being applied by their students (Watkins and Biggs, 1996; 2001)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion