Plagiarism, International Students, and the Second-Language Writer

Plagiarism is a particularly complex issue because it straddles the boundary between academic integrity and academic literacy. Academic texts are widely understood to involve complex and precise expression and rhetorical sophistication. Learning to write them is rarely easy, but writers who are working through a second language face an additional challenge. Because of a trend toward increased international mobility among students, the number of inexperienced academic writers using a second language is large and rising rapidly. If, as it has been suggested, this group is especially likely to be charged with plagiarism, then there is a real danger both to the students in this group and to the standards of academic integrity. This chapter examines the aspects of plagiarism which are of particular relevance to second-language writers, identifies potential problem areas, and suggests solutions.