But I changed three words!

Plagiarism in the ESL Classroom

Makiko was an excellent student. A college freshman who had come to the United States during her sophomore year of high school, she displayed exceptionally strong language skills. In her first semester, however, she was placed in a low-level ESL writing course, and her teacher--impressed with her ability--wondered why. Makiko received an A in the class; you can imagine her surprise, therefore, when three semesters later she was told by her history professor that she had done so poorly on a paper that she might be expelled.

Makiko had plagiarized. In fact, she had plagiarized whole sections of her history professor's book. At a school hearing, her old ESL teacher testified on her account, but that testimony was weakened once the teacher admitted that she had covered the topic of plagiarism in her class.

The hearing board dealt swiftly and harshly with Makiko's academic offense. Seen as someone who had knowingly plagiarized the work of others, Makiko was suspended from the university for a period of two years.

In fact, however, Makiko did not fully understand the American rules for attribution--even after studying those rules in her ESL writing class. In her paper, Makiko had tried to show her teacher respect by revealing that she had read his other works. For the university, however, this was not a valid excuse--she had, after all, attended two years of high school in the states. This student was expected to know better and, in the end, learned a painful lesson.

The lesson Makiko learned--that plagiarism will not be tolerated--is being widely taught as an increasing number of students find their papers being challenged in university classes throughout the United States. As ESL writing teachers, we are confronted with the realization that many of our students not only are unfamiliar with the rules of plagiarism, but have, in fact, been taught in their home countries to appropriate the words of others without the use of proper citations. Indeed, many of these students believe such appropriation is not only needed but expected by their teachers of English.

We believe that these students can best be helped by having this topic introduced at the secondary level. Discussions of plagiarism will not only sensitize students but may help them to avoid potential problems, such as scoring poorly on international exams or being placed inappropriately in lower-level language classes.

In this article, we make several suggestions for combating the problem of plagiarism in the ESL classroom. These suggestions, however, need not be limited to ESL students, as we have found that they work with American students as well.

Plagiarism is receiving considerable attention in schools and in the media. Donald McCabe, a professor of business ethics at Rutgers University, found in a 1991 national poll involving thirty-one of the nation's most prestigious schools that more than 50 percent of students had cheated during their college careers (Tetzeli 1991). Further, many observers believe that this cheating begins in high school, where many students "are taught to copy from a book" (Sterling 1992).

In high school, teachers often ask students to write research papers or reports that require little more than the repetition of information found in textbooks and encyclopedias. Sterling says many students are taught that "the way to write a 'report' is to go to the library, copy from a book . . . put a title page and table of contents on it, make a fancy folder, and receive an A." However, receiving As for such work is not likely to occur once a student enters the arena of higher education--and for ESL students entering this arena, the transition is particularly problematic.

For many ESL students, learning not to cheat is more than a difficult task; it is a cultural hurdle. In some Asian cultures, students are taught to memorize and copy well-respected authors and leaders in their societies to show intelligence and good judgment in their writing. This is particularly true of our Chinese students who have frequently defended this difference in class. Korean students, who say that their country shares similar "customs," argue that their educational system emphasizes the importance of grades more than the way in which one achieves those grades. Mexican students have remarked that this focus on grades is also true in their country, with one student arguing that there are only so many slots at the top.

What these students have in common is a general belief that to be the best, you have to copy the best. As teachers, we must address these cultural differences, as well as the general problems of plagiarism, if students are to succeed in their college careers.

When we first began teaching ESL students about the pitfalls of plagiarism, we spent several weeks preaching to our students on the various rules for citing, paraphrasing, and summarizing sources. Like many teachers who do not fully grasp the reasons and extent to which students "copy" others' work, we created sentence -and paragraph-level exercises that tested our students' ability to change important words and recognize blatant cases of thefts. Unfortunately, however, these exercises tested little else.

A typical assignment began by having students read and discuss articles on plagiarism cases to have them think about the topic and about what their understanding of plagiarism already was. Then we put single lines and passages from a book on an overhead projector with proper citations. In small groups, students analyzed paraphrases of these quotations and decided whether plagiarism had taken place.

Not surprisingly, few students recognized the cases of appropriation unless the words were identical and lacking quotation marks. This led to both group and whole-class discussions of plagiarism and its multiple forms. Later, students practiced quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing short passages or articles. After a few such exercises, we moved on to the next lesson--only to find that we had done so too soon.

It did not take long to learn that our students had not fully understood plagiarism or how not to do it. Indeed, by the ninth week, they were still plagiarizing extensively, albeit unintentionally. This caused us to reflect upon our practices and to turn to our students for help.

We asked our classes to discuss in their journals their understanding of plagiarism and any problems that they may have had while documenting sources for their papers. The responses we received were genuine and insightful. Said one student:

Since I have not been well educated and trained in this aspect, I worry of making a unforgettable mistake by the carelessness. To what degree is considered as plagiarizing? Is it suitable to put everything with quotation and in the cited list? I still need time to learn it.

This student was clearly aware of the ethical issues involved in plagiarism. His interest in determining the degree to which information could be appropriated showed his awareness of existing (and much debated) gray areas. His comment caused us to develop activities that took students beyond the basic mechanics of citation and into the limitations of common knowledge both in and outside of one's field.

One of the reasons for this kind of situation is inevitable--the lack of self-confidence, since the author is more a "English-user" than you are. For a person who has relied on imitation more than creation for a long time, the skill of avoiding plagiarism (use your own words to describe the same idea) is really a hard job.

For this student, avoiding plagiarism was a cultural barrier that had to be broken. Such comments caused us to have students compare and contrast the "rules of cheating" in their own countries with those that they were learning in the United States. We also had students write about any cultural conflicts that they may have been feeling.

Through journals and class discussions, students helped us understand that we needed to expand our otherwise simple definition of plagiarism and go beyond teaching our students what quotes, paraphrases, and summaries are.

The first thing we did was throw out the old one- and two-liners in our original activities and replace them with authentic, discourse-level materials. We used entire papers and articles to illustrate the ways in which authors incorporate a broad range of sources within their own texts. In addition, we used actual ESL student papers to model successful and unsuccessful attempts at documenting sources. We found that using only well-documented examples forced students to see their own writing as either good or bad. Showing them a range also helped students grasp such gray areas as "common knowledge" within different academic disciplines.

Next, we created student-centered activities, asking our students to form mixed-culture groups to discuss differences between one another and the problems that might arise as a result of those differences. After one such activity, a Korean student said that learning not to plagiarize caused significant problems for her because of its very premise. Koreans, she said, believe in the group: "Our words are to be shared." Americans, she said, are so individual that they must own everything, even words and thoughts.

Finally, after hashing out many of our students' concerns, we had them practice paraphrasing or summarizing in class again. This time, however, we had them put away their sources before doing so, thereby forcing them to digest and present information in their own voices. If students continued to have problems, we had them write everything they knew about a subject before conducting research. This approach turned out to be effective in getting them to use sources as support, rather than the other way around.

When we began teaching the perils of plagiarism to our ESL students, we found that the typical textbook-type exercises simply did not work. Through journals and class discussions, we learned that it was insufficient to provide students with a list of rules and citation styles in order to show theme how not to plagiarize. For many students, the concept itself was foreign (or "American")--a culturally different way of thinking and performing.

This meant we had to treat plagiarism as a technical, ethical, and cultural issue. In addition, we had to supply our students with more than a basic knowledge of writing strategies for acknowledging sources; we had to give them ample opportunity to practice their newfound skills. This extended immersion in training, followed by a semester of follow-up exercises and discussions, helped to reinforce that plagiarism is both a complex issue and one that is taken seriously in the United States.

Students who do not learn how to develop their own ideas and properly attribute the work of others may cheat themselves intellectually; they also risk ending their academic careers before the careers even get started.

Sterling, G. 1992. Plagiarism and the worms of accountability. Education Digest (May): 54-56.

Tetzeli, R. 1991. Business students cheat most. Fortune (July I): 14ff.

White, E. M. 1993. Too many campuses want to sweep student plagiarism under the rug. The Chronicle of Higher Education (Feb. 24): A44.

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BY LENORA C. THOMPSON AND PORTIA G. WILLIAMS

Lenora C. Thompson and Portia G. Williams are instructors in the Department of Speech Communication, University of Illinois, Urbana.