2nd draft ulab

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Definition

An act of dishonesty among students in university is always associated with

plagiarism especially in the academia world. In fact, plagiarism can be defined in several

ways according to the contexts it is put on. According to American Heritage Dictionary

(2014), “plagiarize” can be defined as “to steal and use the ideas or writings of another writer

as one’s own work”. Besides that, as suggested by Oxford Dictionary (2014), “plagiarism is

an action of taking and using another person’s thoughts, writing, and invention and so forth

as one’s own”. Furthermore, based on the studies made by Moulton and Robinson (2002),

they state that plagiarism can also be seen as “depriving authors of profit that is rightfully

theirs which theft. In addition, they also highlight that depriving authors of credit might also

be a form of theft.”

Having read the past studies and the dictionaries above, it is concluded that those are

some reliable definitions given by the online resources. Based on what we understand,

plagiarism is an unethical act that is done by some desperate students who want to achieve

good grades by taking shortcuts to complete their assignment which in this situation, they

steal other people’s ideas without acknowledging them appropriately.

However, despite of all the definitions given by those sources, some students

especially educational students in University of Technology Malaysia (UTM) seem unaware

that they have actually committed plagiarism. To them, such act is just one of the processes in

completing their assignments and it must be done for if not, the assignments could not be

completed. Thus, we are called to conduct an investigation regarding this serious yet

unresolved matter. After having a discussion, we decided to study and investigate ‘The Cause

and Effect of Plagiarism towards Educational Students in UTM’ which eventually will

become the title of this paper.

1.2 Background of the Study

Continuing with the next point which is the background of the problem, we have

found some common drawbacks of plagiarism in the past studies which leads to the purpose

of the production of this paper. In the reading process, we discover that plagiarism causes lots

of negative effects which include the non-developing essence of ethical values such as

honesty, integrity, personal efforts and respect for other’s works. But worst of all, such acts

1 | Plagiarism Among Education Students in UTM

are hard to be detected and those ‘theft’, almost all of them, are still repeating the unethical

act without being caught by the right authority. We are actually concerned that if such act is

not prevented, it will become a common norm in our academic world. Thus, this paper is

produced. Moreover, even though such drawbacks will not seem to affect the students now, it

will eventually be a severe problem in the long term. For instance, the quality of their work

will continue to be degraded or decreasing from time to time. The consequences are severe.

Without them knowing it, such act will cause them to not be hired by their future employers

because they are lack of quality values which nowadays, has become a crucial requirement to

step into the working world.

1.3 Problem Statement

Plagiarism cases happen frequently among educational student in UTM and what are the

factors and effects that contribute to such act.

1.4 Objectives of the Study

Our objective is to investigate empirically the factors and effects of plagiarism that is

done by education students in UTM. Besides, we also have narrowed the focus of our

investigation to find the solutions for the problem of plagiarism in UTM.

Moving on with the next point, the studies are also being conducted to answer several

questions which are:

How serious is the problem of plagiarism among educational students in UTM?

What are the causes and effects of plagiarism among educational students in UTM?

We believe that the answer to this specific question will help us to help the educational

faculty to prevent plagiarism among the students smoothly and effectively. Thus, such effort

is crucial because it will help the educational students to be more ethical in the academic

world which also increasing their point and value in the context of legitimacy for the sake of

their own future and this is the significance of our investigation.

Last but not least, we are focusing on two main ways to collect our data for this study

which the first one is through the primary source. Regarding to this matter, we are going to

distribute questionnaires among the Educational student in UTM. Approximately 62 students

will be chosen randomly regardless their races and genders. Plus, several interview sessions

will be conducted among these students and the aim is for us to have a concrete data to


support our investigation. Nevertheless, we are also using the secondary source such as

article journals from the previous studies and so forth to have a better understanding on how

to conduct our investigation. These two sources are crucial as they, hopefully, will help to

guide us throughout the investigation.


2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Cases of Plagiarism

Plagiarism is widespread in academia. For instance, Guterman (2008) revealed that

“more than 70,000 articles abstracts appeared disturbingly similar to other published work

when scanned by a new search program…The researchers examined 2600 of these abstract

by hand and found three instances of what appears to be outright plagiarism.” This evidence

clearly shows that plagiarism has spread and become one of the major problems in the world

of academia. Furthermore, according to Clarke (2006), he reported that a paper submitted to

AIS-sponsored major conference was found to be highly plagiarized. It was measured that

approximately 70 percent of the paper was copied almost exactly, without quotation marks.

Another case is that politician or corporate member usually use prepared speech writen by

someone else ( Brian Martin, 1994). Many well-known authors have been accused of

plagiarism, including William Shakespeare (Julius, 1998), Mark Twain (Kruse, 1990),

George Orwell (Rose, 1992), Alex Haley (Taylor, 1995), Samuel Beckett (Acheson, 1978)

and Edgar Allen Poe (McMullen, 1995). Song writers including Celine Dion (LeBlanc, 1997)

and Michael474 C. Park Jackson (Dezzani, 1999) and film directors such as Steven Spielberg

(Kessler, 1998; Zeitchik, 1998) have faced plagiarism charges in court.

Before copyright laws was established, it was difficult for writers to establish let-

alone protect authorship, but by the middle of 18th century, plagiarism was more clearly

defined by copyright laws and plagiarists were confronted with changing public attitudes

towards literary property and strong moral views of literary theft (Goldgar, 2001).

2.2 Factors of Plagiarism

The problem is why do students plagiarize? Some students plagiarize unintentionally.

It occurs when a student fails to adopt (perhaps because they do not know) proper protocols

for referring to academic material, including appropriate ways of quoting, acknowledging

ideas and compiling reference lists (Mills, 1994). Secondly, students plagiarize because they

have strong desire to obtain good grades. According to Straw (2002), he has stated that

students have higher tendency to copy people’s work when they want to achieve higher GPA.

Therefore, ‘cheating’ becomes “the price of an A” (Whiteman & Gordon, 2001). Moreover,

poor time management is another factors of plagiarism among students. Students lifestyle

commonly involve a lot of activities such as active social life, commitment to university

sports representative, families responsibilities and pressure to complete multiple assignments.


Silverman (2002) concluded that students’ hectic lives leave them to have higher temptation

to cheat. Another study have found that students’ attitudes towards teachers and class is

related to the reasons of cheating. Some students cheat because they think that the assignment

given by that particular teacher is meaningless (Howard, 2002). Burnett (2002) emphasises

the importance of bonding between teacher and students, especially trust. This is because

when students have good relationship with their teacher, they will dedicate themselves to

complete their assignments given by the teacher without taking shortcuts.

2.3 Effects of Plagiarism

Plagiarism among students has brought out several negative effects. Plagiarism in

academia affects institutional reputation. Reputation is closely related to the academic

integrity of both university staff and students. Spreading of plagiarism news of a particular

university can undermine institutional reputation (Sharman and Wilshire, 2007). Moreover, if

students plagiarize to complete their assignment, they will learn nothing from the assignment

given (Abdolmohammadi and Baker, 2007) and plagiarism also inhibits students intellectual

development (Yeung et al., 2002). Another effect of plagiarism is the loss of degree or job.

When the authority of the university discovers that the students have committed plagiarism,

the students will lose their opportunities to graduate (Shane, 2013). In addition, a professor

who is found guilty in academia will also be penalized to lose his job and reputation.

2.4 Approaches to Discourage Plagiarism

There are some approaches to discourage students from committing plagiarism. First,

examples should be offered for the students to refer while doing their assignment. Ii is quite

beneficial in avoiding plagiarism, if they have specific examples of what is, and is not,

plagiarism to use as a guide when they prepare their papers (Birnbaum and Goscilo, 2001).

For example, instructor can provide them with a paragraph of original text followed by a

series of sentence based on the text. There are two types of series which are series with

proper citation and another series with improper practices. After that, students are asked to

identify which series is considered as plagiarism. Other than that, instructor also can explain

to the students on why they should not plagiarise by giving some examples of consequences

of cheating. One of the example that will be given is that students who caught red handed in

plagiarism will not allowed to graduate on time.


The past studies are very important as their findings and results are relevant to this paper’s

main focus which are factors and effects of plagiarism among students and also the ways to

avoid plagiarism.


3.0 Research Methodology

3.1 Introduction

This section discusses the methodology of the research. The main purposes of the

research are to investigate the factors and effects of plagiarism among educational

students in UTM. To assess and evaluate the factors and effect of plagiarism, the

educational campus of UTM with the capacity of approximately 500 students was chosen.

However, our respondents were only the second year undergraduates. Data for the

research was collected through questionnaire and interview.

3.2 Research Instrument

This research utilized both the quantitative and qualitative research methodology. The

instrument used to collect the data was through questionnaires and interviews.

3.2.1. Questionnaire

A set of questionnaire containing 22 questions divided into four sections. Different

question-types, such as general category, ranking, scales and open-ended were used in the

questionnaire. The different sections of the questionnaire were; 1) personal information,

2) about your past schooling, 3) reasons of plagiarism and 4) suggestion. The

questionnaire was piloted to a group of 15 students to assess its validity before it was

distributed.

3.2.2. Interview

For the qualitative data, we held interviews and extract students opinions regarding the

effect of plagiarism in our discussion part. We have interviewed 2 education students, a

female and a male student as we believe it will help us to gain more information from both

genders’ perspective. Two questions were asked to the students during the interview

session. The two questions are as follow:

1. From your opinion, what would be the consequences of plagiarism towards students?

And can you please elaborate them one by one?

2. Would you mind to elaborate your point?


3.3 Respondent of the Study

The respondents of the study were second year undergraduate students from 6 different

courses which is SPPL, SPPH, SPPR, SPPQ, SPPJ and SPPS. The number of second year

undergraduates in education faculty is approximately 120 students. Table below shows

the number of the students that answered our questionnaire for each courses:

COURSE NUMBER OF STUDENTS

SPPL 12

SPPH 10

SPPR 8

SPPQ 8

SPPJ 12

SPPS 12

TOTAL 62

Table 3.3.1: The number of respondents from different courses

So a total of 62 questionnaires were distributed to the students from education faculty in

UTM. The entire questionnaire that has been distributed was returned back and of these

numbers, 26 were male students while the rest (36) were female. All the 62 students were

all Malaysian.

For the interview part, we also applied the same thing, which is choosing the interviewees

at random. Two students from two different courses were chosen by us. The students’

names that we have interviewed were as follow:

1. Mr. Muhammad Izrul Syafiq Bin Abdul Razak

2. Ms. Beatrice Eugena

3.4 Research Procedure

Before the actual data collection period, a pilot study was conducted to assess the validity

of the research instruments. A total of 15 students were involved in the pilot study which

is also the students from ULAB class.


During the actual study, the questionnaires were distributed to the representatives of

each course in educational faculty. The representative will then distribute the

questionnaires to his/her class member. The students were chosen at random by the

representative of the class. Once they have done answered the entire question, it was

returned back to us. Since the total of our questionnaires were only 62, so we cannot

distributed it equally for each courses, thus, what we did was distributed it at random to

those representatives.

For, the interview part, we asked the two interviewees two questions and the

questions were focusing on the effect of plagiarism. The questions have been stated in the

3.3 which is the Research Instrument part. Their opinions were recorded by us using voice

recorder and then we wrote it back exactly like what has been said by them to make it

easier for us to transcript the data.

3.5 Data Analysis

To analyze the quantitative data, we entered the data into computer using Microsoft Excel.

The results were presented through frequency counts and other descriptive statistics. For

the open-ended question, we transcribed the data based on the similarities among the

comments given by the students. Whereas for the interview, we also transcribed and

extract it based on how concise the opinions were in related to our topic. All the findings

either qualitative or quantitative were synthesized and summarized by us in the finding

and discussion part.


4.0 Findings and Discussion

4.1 Introduction

An investigation was carried out to study the factors and effects of plagiarism among

education students in UTM. This section will discuss the findings and discussion on the data

that we have collected through distribution of questionnaire towards the respondents.

Throughout our survey, we have found out that most of the respondents have come across the

word “plagiarism” before they came to UTM. What is interesting in this finding is that even

though most of them have heard the word “plagiarism”, the act of plagiarism is still common

among the respondents. Surprisingly the number of those who have heard the word

“plagiarism” which is about 43 students and this figure has exceeded the number of those

who have not heard the word “plagiarism” which is 19 students.

Regarding this matter, teacher has become the prior source which the students get to know

the word “plagiarism” from with the number of 33 respondents. The rest of the sources are

Internet (17 respondents), television (6 respondents) and the least which is newspaper (3

respondents). This is because plagiarism is a term that has been used in academia for so many

years, so the teacher tend to put a lot more focus to increase the awareness among the

students about plagiarism. Plus, the teacher is the main source of students’ knowledge.

Other than that, the data also shows that most of the respondents’ teachers in the past

schoolings have told them that they have plagiarized and the range is between 1 to 5 times.

Remarkably, the number of that respondents is 37 which is more than half of the respondents.

It means that the majority have been warned by their teachers. Although they have been told

by the teacher that they have done such mistakes, they are still repeating it.

It is found that the same occurrence has happened as the majority of the respondents which is

35 students that have copied the words or ideas from other people without stating citation

between the range of 1 to 5 times. The frequency of plagiarizing is actually in moderate level

as there are 14 respondents have copied more than 5 times.


4.2 Factors of Plagiarism

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Factors of plagiar ism among Students in UTM

Factors of Plagiarism

Num

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Figure 4.1 Factors of Plagiarism among Students in UTM.

Figure 4.1 shows the factors of plagiarism among education students in UTM. At first, there

were 12 factors stated in the questionnaire to determine exactly how many students agreed for

each of the factors. As a result, 7 out of 12 factors had been agreed by more than half of the

students. Those factors are such as the easiness to attain information from Internet access,

strong desire to obtain good grades, uneasiness to get caught, most assignment are given at

the same time, lack of paraphrasing and summarizing knowledge, high expectations from

family and lecturer’s reluctance to take action against students who plagiarized.

From the figure above, it is clearly illustrates that the factor of easiness to attain

information from internet access got the highest number of students who agreed on. The

number of students was 50 out of 62 respondents with the percentage of 81%. We have

speculated that there are some reasons on why there were large number of students

plagiarized by attaining information from Internet. One of the reasons is due to the existence

of Wikipedia on Internet. Wikipedia is a website that provides wide range of information from

different aspects for the users to refer. As most of the information is available, students tend

to copy it from Wikipedia. Secondly, UTM has wide coverage of free Wi-Fi Internet

connection for students and staff to access. With the convenience of Internet connection

provided, students can plagiarize easily. Lastly, the advancement of technology devices such

as smartphones provide with high speed Internet connection allow the students to access

Internet with just a few touches on the mobile’s screen.


Other than that, the factor that got second highest number of students who agreed on

was the high expectations from family to achieve good grades. The number of students who

agreed that this statement was one of the plagiarism factors is 43 with the percentage of 69%.

In our opinion, we think that those families which have high expectation on their children are

those who have high socio-economy status. The success of their parents in their career makes

them have the tendency to give a lot of hope towards their children so that their children can

be successful like them when they grow up. In contrast, families that are poor may also put

high expectation on their children as they wish that their children will have a more fortunate

life in the future. High expectation from family may create high pressure on the students. The

students will have the sense of high responsibility to achieve good results so that they will not

disappoint their parents. Hence, they have the desire to take shortcut which is plagiarizing to

obtain good grades.

Followed by the third highest number of students who agreed that one of the

statements that contributed plagiarism among them which was most assignments were given

at the same period. The number of students who agreed that this statement affected the act of

plagiarism was 36 out of 62 with the percentage of 58%. We found that students from TESL

course are taking 9 subjects in the fourth semester which is this semester. The number of

subjects taken in TESL course is considered as a lot as compared to other courses such as

Pure Physics or Computer Science in which the students from those courses are taking only

around 6 subjects in a semester. Therefore, there are a lot of assignments given due to large

quantity of subjects taken. In addition, most of the assignments are given at the same time

with the date of submission fell on the same week. Therefore, students who have poorer time

management will have higher tendency to plagiarize because they know that they will fail to

complete their assignment on time.

Other than those top three factors, having strong desire to obtain good grades is also

considered as one of the plagiarism factors as there were 35 students agreed on it with the

percentage of 56%. Based on our speculations, one of the reasons that contributes the strong

desire is to apply scholarships. If a student achieved high CGPA at the end of the semester,

he or she has the opportunity to be selected as scholarship holder e.g. Jabatan Perkhidmatan

Awam Scholarship (JPA). Besides, some students care about their reputation so they want to

maintain good grades throughout their life. The strong desire emerged among them have

driven them into the wrong track which is to plagiarize.


Besides, there are other two factors which had the same number of agreement by

students as the fourth factor discussed earlier which had 35 students with the percentage of

56%. The first one was uneasy to get caught by the authority. It means that they have been

committing plagiarism for quite a long time. In our point of view based on our analysis, we

think that this is because students are getting smart in doing plagiarism to avoid getting

caught red handed. For example, they have the ability to change the structure of the sentence

from the original sentence without stating citation. Another factor is lack of paraphrasing and

summarizing skills. In fact, we have found that only TESL students have studied a subject

called Academic Skills. Through this subject, students were taught to paraphrase and

summarize in correct methods and the way to prevent them from committing plagiarism.

However, other education courses do not have this subject. So, students from other courses

who are lack of paraphrasing and summarizing knowledge will lead them to plagiarize

indirectly.

Lastly, the factor that had the lowest number of students that agreed on was lecturer’s

reluctance to take action against students who plagiarized. The number of students was 34

with the percentage of 55%. This factor occupied the lowest percentage because most of the

lecturers have taken action against them. Nevertheless, there are still some lecturers who

ignore their students’ poor behavior because they just want their students to obtain high

grades regardless of how they achieve it. Students will eventually have the bad habit of

plagiarizing throughout their university route.

4.3 Effects of Plagiarism

As contrast with the procedure of collecting the data for the factors of plagiarism, we

have decided to interview 2 students from our very own Education Faculty instead of

distributing the questionnaires to them. We have also decided to interview students from both

genders; a female and male student, as we believe it will help us to gain more information

from both genders’ perspective.

Also, we believe that by getting the information from both genders’ perspective, it

will help us to broaden our view on the effect of plagiarism. Not only that, we would also

want our data to be legit and relevant as we try to push out any sexism, racism, and etc. issues

from being raised later on by the readers. Moreover, both students have actually been


randomly picked by us to be the respondents for our investigation on this particular matter

and it is done so without any specific reason.

Furthermore, to our surprise, both respondents agree to allow us to publish their

names as well as their faces in this paper. Our first respondent is the male student, namely

Muhammad Izrul Syafiq bin Abd Razak, and that leaves Beatrice Eugena to be our second

respondent. To make it synchronize with our first interview, we used the same questions as

we did with Mr. Syafiq.

Other than that, both students are interviewed in different sessions but they are in the

same day. Mr. Izrul has agreed to be the first respondent to be interviewed by us. Below were

the questions that we asked them and their respond have been summarized by us into

information which, we believed, it would help the readers to comprehend it better.

Questions

1. In your opinion, what would be the consequences of plagiarism toward students? And

can you please elaborate them one by one?

2. Would you mind elaborate that point Mr./Ms._________?

From the both interview sessions, we have come out with several effect of plagiarism

based on the opinions of Mr. Izrul and Ms. Eugina. According to Mr. Syafiq, plagiarism will

destroy the academic reputation of a person. Either for the students or even the lectures, both

will face the same consequences if they are being caught plagiarizing by the community or

the authority.

As mentioned by Mr. Izrul during the interview, “one’s academic career for instance a

lecturer or even a student will be destroyed in just a blink of an eye if he or she is accused

with an act of plagiarism. It is because the lecturer is the person who is trusted by the

community to provide the students with the pure knowledge”. Thus, if one is charged with

plagiarism, indeed he or she will lose his or her credibility as the one who should educate the

youngsters. Other than that, he also highlighted that a student might be suspended or even

expelled if he or she is charged with plagiarism offenses. Worst, that particular student’s

academic record will forever be held by him. As for that, it will be hard for him to enter other

universities or colleges as they do take this ethic offense very seriously.


Based on Mr. Syafiq’s statement, we could tell that he is actually aware of the

consequences of plagiarism. We were able to conclude this as he managed to list the

consequences one by one from a broad perspective. By that we mean, he did not just view

plagiarism from a student’s perspective but he viewed it from the perspective of a lecturer

also. The examples that have been given by him were quite remarkable too as we can always

relate them to the reality point of view. Besides, they are clear, compact, and excellent.

Surprisingly, Ms. Eugina, differently from Mr. Syafiq, put more stress on the student’s

future career. According to her, “we are not going to be a student for our whole life. Thus, if

a student keeps plagiarizing on his work, he might face a great difficulty once he works later

on. It is because his degree is not actually ‘his’, so when he enters the career world, he might

face problems as he has to produce work based on his own effort”. From our understanding,

what she was trying to tell us is that, if the students do not practice to do work by their own

during university life, it is impossible for them to success in their career later on. On the other

hand, if they being caught red handed plagiarizing other people’s work by their lecturers,

their future might be destroyed instantly. Worst, they might not graduate from that university.

This will make their life harder as nowadays degree is the most important thing to apply for a

post. Other than that, the students who always plagiarize during their university’s life might

also face a great problem when they are working later on. It is because real-life work is much

tougher and harder than any university’s assignments. Hence, we scare that it might hard for

those students to survive in their working life.

Continuing with the next point, Ms. Eugina did mention that plagiarism can always lead

to the destruction of any relationship between students and their friends and students between

their lecturers. During the interview session was going on, she did give us an example that we

believe to reflect the exact real-life situation. We quote directly from what she was saying, “

let’s say, we are dutiful student, of course we will be upset if we put a great effort but then

find out that our friends who plagiarize cut the corners by achieving mark much higher than

us, right? Whereas if a lecturer finds that we have plagiarized, he or she will develop a sense

of distrust and is more likely to scrutinize our work going forward. So even if we put our own

effort for our next assignment, I am sure that the lecturer will not believe in us anymore. It is

a sad thing indeed we need our lecturer’s blessing, so my advice is we must not plagiarize

even for once, because if you did, you might face all these consequences”.


What we can conclude from Ms. Eugina’s statement is she is, same as Mr. Syafiq, well

enlightened on the consequences of plagiarism. Based on the examples that were given by

her, they reflected her knowledge of the act of plagiarism very well. We assume that she

might learn all these issues from her previous experiences as they were so vivid and detail.

In conclusion, we found that both of our respondents agreed that plagiarism leaves

negative effects to the students as well as to the lecturers.


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APPENDICESAppendix A: QuestionnaireQUESTIONNAREPLAGIARISM AMONG EDUCATION STUDENTS IN UTM

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA

CONDUCTED BY ULAB 2112(34) STUDENTS

MONITORED BY DR.MOHD HILMI BIN HAMZAH

Introduction to Questionnaire

Based on the past studies, we have found that there are lots of plagiarism cases among university

students. And this fact has become such a norm in academia. We would like to investigate the

factors and effects of plagiarism among educational students in UTM. The answers provided by

respondents will be confidential.

Section I: Personal Information

Tick the appropriate box or write in the requested information:

1. Sex: male female

2. Nationality: _____________________________

3. Major Field of study: ______________________

4. Year of study: ________


Section II: About Your Past Schooling

1. Before you came to UTM, was the word plagiarism ever mentioned to you?

Yes No

2. If yes, from which source(s) did you get to know the word plagiarism from?

Newspaper Teacher Television Internet

3. The definition of plagiarism is simply known as “to take and use another person’s

thoughts, writing, and invention and so forth as one’s own”. In other words, it means

you do not correctly show which words are yours and which words are from another

writer. How often did any of your teachers in the past schooling ever tell you (i. e., by

means of spoken or written comments) that you have made this kind of mistake in

your own written work?

Never 1 – 5 times More than 5 times

4. To what extent do you think that you have copied the words or ideas from other

people without stating citation?

Never 1 – 5 times More than 5 times

5. Have any of your instructors in your secondary/tertiary education told you that you

have used others’ work without stating them properly?

Never 1-5 times More than 5 times


Section III Reasons of Plagiarism

To choose your most appropriate answer, please tick ( √ ) inside a box of the table

below.

In your opinion, to what extent

do you agree with the statements

below?

1

Strongly

Disagree

2

Disagree

3

Agree

4

Strongly

Agree

1. I can attain information

easily from Internet

accessing

2. I do not understand the

concept of plagiarism

3. I have a strong desire to

obtain good grades

4. I believe that I would not

get caught easily

5. I have a poor time

management

6. I cannot cope with

assignments as they are

too difficult

7. I do not put much effort

in doing the task given


8. I cannot handle

assignments as they are

all given at the same time

9. I do not have the proper

knowledge of

paraphrasing and

summarising

10. I have badly designed

assessment tasks

11. I have a family that has

high expectations on me

to obtain good grades

12. I find lecturers reluctant

to take action against

students who plagiarise.

Section IV Suggestion

1. In your opinion, can you suggest a way to reduce the plagiarism cases?

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________


Appendix B: Interview Scripts

Figure A: Mr. Syafiq (right)

Below are the questions that we asked Mr.Syafiq and his response to each one of it:

1. In your opinion, what would be the consequences of plagiarism toward students? And

can you please elaborate them one by one?

In my opinion, there are many consequences of plagiarism toward a student especially us

who are consistently exposed to the technology nowadays. Please do not get me wrong here

guys. I am not saying that I have anything against it but it has to be used wisely otherwise

you will just abuse its noble function which I believe to make it easier for us to gain

knowledge these days. As for that, I will try my best to give you guys with a broad

perspective of plagiarism.

To answer your question, the first consequence would be it would destroy our academic

reputation. As you all know, the consequences of plagiarism have been widely reported in the

world of academia. One’s academic career for instance a lecturer or even a student will be

destroyed in just a blink of an eye if he or she is accused with an act of plagiarism. It is

because the lecturer is the person who is trusted by the community to provide the students

with the pure knowledge. Thus, if one is charged with plagiarism, indeed he or she will lose

his or her credibility as the one who should educate the youngsters. As for the students, he or

she may face a great problem if he or she is caught plagiarizing.


2. Would you mind elaborate that point Mr. Syafiq?

Well, not at all. As I was saying, a student might face a great problem if he is caught

plagiarizing. For instance, same as the example that I have given before, plagiarism may

destroy a student’s reputation if he is caught doing it by the right person, the lecturer. As

serious as it is sounded, plagiarism can cause a student to be suspended or even worst,

expelled. His academic record will tell us that he has done the only terrible thing in the world

of academia which is plagiarism and it is one of the ethic offenses. Possibly, it will cause the

student to be barred from entering other colleges as most of those education institutions do

take plagiarism very seriously. Moreover, most colleges and universities have academic

integrity committees that put an eye to the students’ work. Many students are suspended for

their first violation and worst, there are some that have been expelled for their further offense.

Figure B: Ms. Eugina

Below are the questions that we ask Ms. Eugina and her responds to each one of it:

1. In your opinion, what would be the consequences of plagiarism toward students?

And can you please elaborate them one by one?

First of all, thank you for asking, I am so glad that you ask for my opinion regarding this

issue. So from my point of views as a student, plagiarism do brings lots of bad effects

especially for the students’ future. As we all know, we are not going to be a student for our

whole life, thus, if a student keeps plagiarizing his/her work, he might face a great difficulty

once he/she work later on. It is because his/her degree is not actually theirs, so when they

enter the career world, they might face problems as we have to produce our own effort. What

I try to say is that, if the students do not practice to do work by their own during university


life, for me, it is impossible for them to success in their career later on. On the other hand, if

they being caught red handed plagiarizing other people’s work by their lecturers, their future

might be destroyed. Worst, they might not graduate from that university. This will make their

life harder as nowadays degree is the important thing to apply for a job. Other than that,

believe it or not, if we plagiarize, we might also damage the relationship with friends as well

as with the lecturers.

2. Would you mind elaborate more about your point Miss Eugina?

Of course! But I would like to elaborate my second point just now which is

plagiarizing can damage the relationship between friends and lecturer. Let say, we are

dutiful student, of course we will be upset if we put a great effort but then find out that

our friends who plagiarize cut the corners by achieving mark much higher than us, right?

Whereas if a lecturer finds that we have plagiarized, he/she will develop a sense of

distrust and is more likely to scrutinize our work going forward. So even if we put our

own effort for our next assignment, I am sure that the lecturer will not believe in us

anymore. It is a sad thing indeed we need our lecturer’s blessing, so my advice is we must

not plagiarize even for once, because if you did, you might all these consequences.


2nd draft ulab

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