Recent studies suggest that plagiarism had been exaggerated especially among university students nowadays. The students often procrastinate their homework or assignments until last minute. At the end, they try to finish up their assignments by copying directly from their friends or other medias without giving any credit to the original authors. The unaware of this problem causes students practicing plagiarism. Plagiarism is a word from Latin, plagiarius which means stealing other ideas or works without attributing them.
Ellery (2008) has mentioned that the most common explanation for plagiarism from electronic sources was that the students were unaware of the requirement to acknowledge such sources, specifically in an in-text format. Ellery (2008) gave an example of a study conducted by geography students at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal at South Africa where it found that 26% students plagiarized their text in the assignment due to influencing by electronic sources of information. The main reasons given to plagiarism are ignorance or misunderstanding of good referencing practices or poor engagement with the issues at hand. Based from the study, it is totally concluded that most of the students are not realise on how important to acknowledge the sources and reference the authors.
This shows lack of respect to the authors and ideas.Besides that, VAIL (1996) emphasized that plagiarism is ultimately short-circuits of learning process. Plagiarism discouraged students to attract their mind with the subject matter they are being tested on, thus, standoff their intellectual growth. VAIL (1996) also stated that plagiarism has been practiced since ancient time and the concept of copyright has risen intensely in the modern era due to commercialization of writing.
Once can avoid plagiarism by proper attribution which copying the information and compile them without discriminate the original source and authors.Moreover, Pennycook (1996) successfully conducted an informal interview with Hong Kong Chinese students at the University of Hong Kong who had been caught plagiarizing. The outcome of this interview revealed that they dissatisfied of the quality of the lectures and tutorial, having too many works and assignment to do and poor writing skills. This study habits had led them to commit plagiarism. The other interesting issue is about the problem of the students to rephrase the sentences without changing the exact meaning of the information.Gabriel (2010) stated that digital technology makes cheating easier whether it is texting exam answers to friends, sharing homework online or downloading ready-made term papers from internet.
It seems that the students are living in a whole new dimension called internet and does not seem to have an author. This led students to neglect attributing the authors for every information they gained. Gabriel (2010) addressed that some colleges in United States of America requiring students to complete online tutorials about plagiarism, which at one school cut down plagiarism rate by two thirds. This tutorial assisted students to understand the disadvantages of plagiarism.In conclusion the students must aware that plagiarism could lead them to harmful consequences in the future. To curb plagiarism successfully, every people should be honest in doing their work and it is vital to carefully avoid plagiarism or anything that could be towards plagiarism.
The author of any piece of work is always assumed to be merely and totally accountable for that work unless it is clearly stated otherwise. Any use of the work from other people should be clearly acknowledged to avoid disrespect toward their idea and hard work. By avoiding plagiarism, we can preserve the originality of each masterpiece of the people.
