The influence of culture and educational context on Chinese students’ understandings of source use practices and plagiarism Dawn Bikowski a, * , Min Gui b a ELIP Academic & Global Communication Program, Department of Linguistics, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA b College English Department, School of Foreign Languages & Literature, Wuhan University, PR China article info Article history: Received 24 May 2017 Received in revised form 19 March 2018 Accepted 24 March 2018 1. Introduction Research on plagiarism and how to support students in their use of source material in their academic writing continues to expand and has covered a variety of topics and perspectives. Most scholars now look beyond moral explanations as to why students engage in inappropriate textual borrowing (e.g., Howard, 1995; Pecorari, 2003; Pennycook, 1996), instead exploring complexities related to the second language (L2) writer's identity (Abasi, Akbari, & Graves, 2006), attempts to join a discourse community (Flowerdew & Li, 2007), or educational or cultural background, knowledge, or attitudes (Hu & Lei, 2012; Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2005). The concept has been reviewed from a critical perspective as well, calling attention to the role of power and privilege within plagiarism accusations (Lea & Street, 1998; Lyon, 2009). This topic is particularly salient given that misunderstandings about plagiarism continue in spite of instruction (Flowerdew & Li, 2007; Wette, 2010) and suggestions for various educational strategies intended to eradicate it (Bikowski and Broeckelman, 2007; Dong, 1998). Students often express concerns over plagiarizing inadvertently and are unsure of Anglo- American academic expectations (Lea & Street, 1998). Many scholars recommend contextualizing plagiarism and its avoid- ance within the larger framework of effective writing, helping students understand cultural and social as well as technical aspects of source use (e.g., Bloch, 2008). As indicated by the growing number of students accused of plagiarism and calls for more practice-oriented research on how English L2 writers use source material (Wette, 2010), more understanding is needed on how students understand plagiarism and various ways that source material can be integrated into an author's text (i.e., source use practices). This study addresses this need and focuses on undergraduate Chinese students. It has been suggested that students from Asian countries often struggle to learn source use practices and avoid plagiarism when they pursue studies in North America (Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2005). China, specifically, has been identified as a culture in which many do not share the Anglo- American notion of plagiarism and idea ownership (Sutherland-Smith, 2005) and as a population that merits further * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: bikowski@ohio.edu (D. Bikowski), guimin@whu.edu.cn (M. Gui). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect System journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/system https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.03.017 0346-251X/© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. System 74 (2018) 194e205