Account for plagiarism in English speaking countries - Essay Example

Make no mistake that the quotation encourages plagiarism. On the contrary, it promotes everyone to be original in their ideas. But could this in reality be practiced especially in academic writing? This may be ideal in fictional writing but academic writing profusely begs to differ. Being novel in every idea and thought without having been influenced by anyone else is something next to impossible particularly in this day and time when almost everything has been a derivative of another. The need to cite is an important part of academic writing.

In order to provide a comprehensive and logical argument to support a thesis, the writer must be able to learn the value of researching pertinent materials from authoritative sources that offer information. These people have dedicated a great amount of time in their accumulated mastery base on derived facts. They serve a foundation or inspiration that catapults an idea into its shape which could either strengthen it or show its weaknesses. Thus, “A writer plagiarises when he or she presents another writer’s unique work as a product of his or her own knowledge and/or imagination” (Johns and Keller, 2005, p.1). This has become a prevalent problem especially in the four corners of educational institutions.

Plagiarism has been on the rise due to societal pressures, poor time management and the internet. Societal pressures play a major role in enticing students to plagiarise. A great number of students feel justified in plagiarising because they feel the additional pressures imposed by teachers without much help makes completing assignments adequately impossible (Sterngold, 2004). Often, a student may be required to finish an assignment or something like a major requirement such as a term paper in more than one subject simultaneously.

The need to finish by the set deadlines provokes them to make the wrong choices. These papers could make or break their grades and instead of failing to turn in an output, they would rather plagiarise in the hopes that they could get away with it. This is a habit that is shared by many students where they all know what each other is up to but there is a standing consensus to keep mum about it and go with the pack. Teachers, on their part, have different approaches to how they treat plagiarism.

There are those who react indifferently especially in the lower level, giving the students a sense of impunity that they have become desensitized to knowing the difference. Then there are those who approach it with utter severity that they implement a strict regulation through verbatim analysis. This happens even without the teacher clearly setting forth the criteria and the measures on how to properly acknowledge a source. This generates hostility in students who demand justification (Hayes and Introna, 2005).

Entering the university is an important goal for students who have been inculcated with the indispensability of tertiary education by their parents. Earning a bachelor’s degree, preferably in a refutable university, is the ultimate dream that parents have for their children. Among the reasons found by Devlin and Gray in their study why students plagiarise is ‘pressures,’ this they elaborate take many forms such as time, stress, family and societal such that one student remarks, “Parents nowadays expect their children to go to uni, whether they [i.e. the child] want to or not” (2007, n.p.).

They are in turn pressured to fulfil their parent’s wishes and pressure themselves to avoid disappointing their family since parents see it a reflection of their parenting if their children fail to enter a university (ibid). Time management is an insistent problem that everyone has to face. In the urban jungle