Plagiarism in the ESL context

The readings for this week took me back in time to the 1980s, when I was teaching English Composition at Indiana University. I was a young graduate assistant, and I had discovered my first case of plagiarism in a freshman student’s paper. It may sound crass, but I was appalled and somewhat nervously excited at the same time. I was not sure how to handle the situation, so I did what any good little grad assistant should do: I asked the director of the Writing program for his advice. After showing him the student’s paper and the passage in question along with a copy of the actual source (which I had easily found in the library), he told me that I should call the student in for a little conference about his paper. He suggested that I ask the student to tell me how he had come up with the ideas in the paper, and see if I could determine whether the plagiarism was intentional or unintentional. If the student admitted copying the passage, then he would be subject to the department policy of receiving an “F” for the paper and an “F” in the course. If I could determine that the copying was unintentional, and maybe done in ignorance, I could give the student an opportunity to revise this essay or to write a new paper.

What I heard was that I should “interrogate” the “defendant” to see if he would own up to intentionally participating in this “crime.” As the meeting time drew closer, I reviewed my planned line of questioning. I would ask the student how he had come up with the paper’s topic. I would carefully ask how his ideas had developed, and how he had researched the topic. Eventually I would broach the subject of plagiarism, and I would ask if he knew what it was.

Well, as it turned out, the student came right out and told me that he had copied the passage from the source. I recall that he did not seem apologetic at all; instead, he seemed rather shocked that I had sensed that the writing was not “original” and that I had been able to find the source material. This reaction was completely unexpected. I had assumed that the student would plead ignorance of how to paraphrase, beg for my forgiveness, and request a chance to redo the paper. I was appalled, and yet amazed.

I came out of that experience with a resolution to always do a thorough job of teaching students not only how to avoid plagiarism, but also how to work with sources: how to paraphrase; how to determine what should be quoted, and how to use the source material to help back up (or support) their own ideas.  What I have gathered from students over the years is that many of them do not believe that they have any ideas that are worth sharing, let alone valuable enough to sound authoritative on the topic.  When I tried to encourage students to try to adopt a more confident voice, some of them bravely responded and created decent (yet still tentative) sentences that could then be supported by authoritative sources.

I could relate to many of the concepts in our readings this week. The concept of plagiarism as a “crime” had been drilled into my head during high school and college, and while my teachers held us responsible for proper use of sources, I do not recall much instruction at all during our English classes. I asked my children (ages 25, 23, “almost” 13, and 10) whether their English teachers (or any other teachers, for that matter) had taught them how to paraphrase from sources, how to use direct quotes, or how to incorporate citations into their original texts. None of them gave a positive response; on the contrary, the two that have already graduated from high school reminded me of how much time I had spent helping them with research papers that required multiple sources and proper citations. (My excuse for not remembering all that—out of sight, out of mind!)

So now the question of plagiarism is being examined in the context of second language writing. As our readings pointed out, many questions arise (and must be carefully considered) so that English-as-a-second-language writers can approach the writing of researched papers with confidence instead of with fear.

Here are a few questions that occur to me:

1)      How should teachers of ESL approach the teaching of incorporating source material into research papers?

2)      Some writers have alluded to the idea that perhaps the Western notion of original writing as “intellectual property” needs to be reconsidered, especially in this era of easy access to the words of others via the Internet. Alastair Pennycook seems to wonder whether it is really that important “to know who really said them originally[?].” He further comments that “…the adherence to supposed norms of authoriality are becoming increasingly hazy” (216). My question is: Are we (writers and teachers of writing) becoming increasingly lazy?

3)  Is it possible for teachers or administrators to develop a policy regarding plagiarism as it may occur in the writing of students whose L1 is other than English?

Source:

Pennycook, Alastair. "Borrowing Others' Words: Text, Ownership, Memory, and Plagiarism." TESOL Quarterly 30.2 (Summer 1996): 201-30. Web.