Factors Leading to Plagiarism Among Acehnese EFL Students in Writing Assignments

Plagiarism is a significant issue in the field of education that many students continue to plagiarize. Plagiarism prevention measures must, therefore, be implemented. This research investigates what leads Acehnese students to plagiarize when working on assignments and the levels of plagiarism among Acehnese English students, as indicated by Turnitin. This research employed qualitative methods with a case study approach. Interviews and documents were the primary sources of the data. The participants were selected purposively: 6 Acehnese students of semester seven and nine at the departments of English language education at two Universities in Banda Aceh (three students from a public Islamic university, under MORA and three from a public university, under MOEC). These students had taken the Introduction to Research Methods course. This research found six factors that cause plagiarism: being unaware of the assignment topics, being unaware of plagiarism, looking for a shortcut, not having adequate writing skills, having low reading interests, and coming across similar assignments online. The level of plagiarism found based on the analysis of six student assignment documents shows two documents with a moderate level of plagiarism and four others with a high level of plagiarism.