Account for plagiarism in universities in English speaking countries - Essay Example

Plagiarism is referred to as copying other people’s ideas or words without giving proper reference or credit. It is just a part of overall cheating problem.Subjective evidence and few researches reveal that cheating among students is much more widespread than it is usually acknowledged. In 2009-10, as much as 17,000 students in more than 80 universities were recorded by universities as involved in plagiarizing. Nowadays, Plagiarism has become a growing concern for universities. A large number of universities spend thousands of dollars in purchasing expensive plagiarism detector software so as to determine the percentage of plagiarism in an assignment. In order to overcome cost, many universities do not check plagiarism of every assignment since there are thousands of students with dozens of courses each year. Therefore, they prefer in checking plagiarism of the most important assignments, dissertations and research papers only. The availability of all type of information over internet has made plagiarism easier than ever before. Copying and pasting entire essays or few paragraphs from internet can be done in just few mouse clicks. Plagiarism is more common among university students since they face unanticipated pressures of deadlines. There are certain reasons which account for plagiarism in university students in English speaking countries. Some of them are briefly mentioned below. Ignorance Countries other than United States may have taught different conventions and rules to their students, which differentiate from that of American Academy. Others merely might not know how to paraphrase appropriately or they might believe that as long as they are providing references and inserting in-text citations, then it is acceptable to use the same language as mentioned in the source from where they are copying. One of the methods to fight ignorance is to teach students in class regarding the convention of academic citations. It can be done by discussing about plagiarism in class, guiding students to the websites of writing centers and handing them out different material related to plagiarism. Writing difficulty Due to lack of interest in studies, many students do not participate in class work and home work. By doing so, they soon lose confidence in their writing skills and abilities. They feel that they are deprived of creative and good ideas as well as academic writing skills. Such students usually confront writer’s block when they are facing the blank page. Since they lack confidence in their own writing abilities, they feel they would not be getting good marks. Therefore, they tend to copy their assignment from other credible sources. Anxiety Anxiety can result from many causes. Some of them include tensions at jobs, anxiety about writing, being overloaded with too many assignments, certain issues at home, not completely understanding the assignment questions etc. Such anxiety arise sense of laziness and carelessness among students. Since they cannot escape the given assignments, therefore they tend to find relevant answers on internet and copy and paste those answers into their assignments as their own words. Careless note-taking Many students do not pay attention in class and avoid note-taking of class lectures. Making notes of regular lectures can minimize the trouble of writing assignment, since they would have necessary points written in their notebooks with the help of which, they can prepare their assignments. Many students do not write notes while being in the class and therefore, when an assignment is given to them, they plagiarize. Lack of perceived consequences If a large number of students are cheating, then it also affects other students who are preparing their assignments by themselves. Such students feel discouraged since they are putting too much effort into their homework while others aren’t. Even worse, the students who plagiarize get good marks than those who are working hard on their assignments without ... Read More