Investigating Student’s Plagiarisms In Academic Writing

This research investigated student's plagiarisms in academic writing. This research focused on investigating the types of plagiarism conducted by English education students and the factors influencing them to commit plagiarism in academic writing. The participants were purposively selected; they are English education students who took an academic writing class and have completed their thesis this semester. The data collection was carried out using two research instruments: document analysis (thesis suspected for plagiarism) and interview. The data obtained from the interviews and document analysis were transcribed and analyzed. Five theses were analyzed, and five participants were interviewed. The document analysis results showed that there were three major types of plagiarism conducted by the students, including clone type, word switch plagiarism, and the 404 error type. The interview results showed that seven major factors encourage them to commit plagiarism, i.e., difficulty in discovering ideas, lack of grammar knowledge, limited academic English vocabularies, limited prior knowledge, improper time management, poor paraphrasing skills, and internet access. However, academic writing skill difficulties, namely: citation and referencing skills, were not included among the factors contributing to students to commit plagiarism. Besides, all participants understand what plagiarism is, but it does not help them avoid plagiarism. Based on these results, it can be concluded that students' awareness of avoiding plagiarism in academic writing should be increased to improve their academic writing quality, especially their thesis.