Innovation in Language Learning

Plagiarism has recently turned into a major concern for academics and academic institutions. The problem seems to have become so widespread that several types of anti-plagiarism software have been developed to check the originality of scholarly papers and students’ assignments. Unfortunately, it appears that this unethical strategy is steadily increasing among college and university students in higher education settings and within other groups such as scholarly and scientific communities, political offices, and journalistic groups. Nevertheless, the reasons continue to be obscure. In reality, available statistical findings do not provide a plain picture of the scale and nature of plagiarism itself and the problems associated with it. Neither do they clarify the extent to which this phenomenon is changing through time or is different from country to country, from subject to subject, or among undergraduate and graduate students. It is assumed that if students are made aware of the consequences of plagiarism, they will exercise some caution in resorting to it while writing an important paper which is going to be published. In spite of the great attention paid to this issue in academic journals and settings, plagiarism still occurs at large, and many students, scholars, and even politicians are still accused of committing it. Some may claim ignorance and some could be breaking the rule to meet deadlines (Song-Turner, 2008). Accordingly, the present study was carried out to investigate EFL college teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the nature and causes of plagiarism. The participants consisted of 20 EFL university professors and 40 university students studying TEFL at MA and PhD levels. They received a Likert-Scale 30-item questionnaire enquiring about the nature of plagiarism in the view of the respondents and their attitude in this regard. The researchers are now interviewing some of the teachers and students in relation to the issue under scrutiny in order to collect the data that might have been otherwise ignored in writing the questions. The process of data collection and analysis is still going on, and the obtained results will be reported in due time.

Keywords: plagiarism, data collection study;