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Chapter II
A Student Perspective
of Plagiarism
Craig Zimitat
Griffth University, Australia
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AbstRAct
This chapter reports on an Australian study of native-English speaking, undergraduate students’ engage-
ment in plagiarism-related behaviours, their knowledge of plagiarism and their academic writing skills.
Students were surveyed to: (1) estimate the incidence of plagiarism behaviours; (2) examine students’
self-reported academic writing skills; (3) their knowledge of plagiarism; and (4) their ability to identify
plagiarised work. Across all three undergraduate years, approximately 90 percent of students believed
that direct copying of text or ideas without acknowledgement constituted plagiarism, whilst around 5
percent were unsure if it constituted plagiarism. The majority of students (80 percent or more) claimed
never to have plagiarized. About 80 percent of undergraduate students said they possessed the skills
of note-taking, paraphrasing, citing, referencing, and so on, but barely half of students in each year
group reported confdence with these skills. Students were able to distinguish between clear-cut cases
of plagiarism and paraphrasing when presented with either different writing processes or different work
samples, but they were less able to distinguish between “borderline cases.” There are clear implications
for classroom practice. First, students need the opportunity to practice and develop their academic writing
skills, in the context of articulating their understandings of their own discipline. This requires teachers
to recognise that academic writing is a developmental skill and to learn how to improve the writing
skills of their students. Second, in this process, teachers need to ensure that students are inducted into
the conventions of the academy that relate to the use, manipulation and transformation of knowledge.