An Investigation Of Knowledge And Attitudes Of Chinese English Majors Towards Plagiarism In Their English Writing

This research aims at investigating the perception, knowledge andattitudes of plagiarism among the English majors in China with thepurpose of exploring pedagogical solution to help students avoid or atleast reduce the plagiarism in their writing. Plagiarism, as a highlynotorious, severely accused phenomenon in academia, has raised wideattention among scholars of culture, language and composition studies allover the world. Currently in China as well, scandals concerningplagiarism is not uncommonly seen or reported in academic publishing.Among all the factors, an important component of academic productionhas often been ignored—the emerging university students themselves.Since they are the major body of future academic and professional writing,it is of considerable necessity and urgency to research their knowledge,attitude and perception of plagiarism so that measures in writinginstruction can be explored to solve the mystery of the constitution ofplagiarism and help cultivate their sense of legitimate writing behaviorand academic ethics. In particular, Chinese English majors need specialattention in that they have both been to a certain degree acculturated inChinese writing system as well as the western one, which would possiblylead to a set of confused or even conflicting criteria for writing andplagiarism as well as their own understanding in the present Chineseacademic context. In this sense, this student body should becomprehensively investigated in terms of how their knowledge, attitudeand perception evolve with the progression of their study. From theexiting theories and studies, the author insists that one major constituentof plagiarism is students’ failure to construct their authorial identity, andthey thus have a very weak sense in terms of proprietorship and originality. This directly leads to the consequence that students do notrespect their and others’ literary property. Therefore, it is highly importantto observe closely the changing construction of their identity in bothwriting and teacher-student interaction as well as their habitual tendencyin intertextual practice. With this purpose, this research, from a integratedperspective, employs the methodology of structured interview, researcheson English majors of three different grades from the same university, canserve as a scientific reference for teachers and institutions to facilitatestudents to practice writing and avoid plagiarism through teachingobjectives, course designs and instructional guidance that accommodatethe students’ psychological development and sociocultural reality inChinese academic community.