Teaching to Avoid Plagiarism in Academic Writing

When students enter universities, they usually study in disciplines and have many chances to involve in academic writing. For example, a student may be required to finish an academic writing assignment as a formative (or summative) assessment in a course, write a dissertation for a degree, or prepare an academic article for publication. Academic writing is at the heart of learning in higher education, because it involves students’ understandings about their disciplines, critical thinking about academic topics, text creation based on analyses, and arguments on targeted themes (Hyland, Language Teaching 46:53–70, 2013). Academic writing has distinct differences from “natural” writing in which people routinely narrate what they see and do (Hyland, Language Teaching 46:53–70, 2013, p. 55), because academic writing focuses on more than just writing. It requires students to critically analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information in specific disciplinary fields. Moreover, academic writing is related to disciplinary knowledge and specific academic terms are often used in texts (Irvin, L. L. (2010). What Is “Academic” Writing? In Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing (Vol. 1, pp. 3–17). Creative Commons.).