Plagiarizing Through False Paraphrasing? A Case Study Of Chinese ESL Students' Writing Problems In Citing Sources

Based on the theory of collectivism-individualism (Hofstede, 1980; Triandis, 1995) and specific Chinese self-construal (Markus and Kitayama 1991): familial orientation and authoritarian orientation (Yang, 2004), the author investigated the use of paraphrases in Chinese English learners' source-responsible writings by applying Keck' s (2006) construct of Attempted Paraphrases. The study shows 1) Chinese English writers use far more Exact Copies, Near Copies and Minimal Revisions than Moderate Revisions and Substantial Revisions. 2) They seldom acknowledge the source or the author by using reporting phrases or clauses and, 3) they tend to use, "we", "there are" "people", "everyone" statements that are labeled as markers of self-presence (Ouyang & Tnag, 2006) as well as "I" statements to claim source author's opinions as their own. 4) Chinese students usually consciously or unconsciously regard borrowing source author's opinions and words in their own use as appropriate. These indicated that Chinese L2 writers tend to blur the boundary of self from source author. Thus the author argues that paraphrasing process in citing sources is a communication between the paraphrase writer and source author. Influenced by the familial-oriented and authoritarian-oriented self-construal, Chinese English writers incline to claim source author's opinions and words as their own in source-responsible writing.