Plagiarism, International Students,

and the Second-Language Writer 37

Diane Pecorari

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
Contexts for English-Medium Instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
Culture in the Academic Literacy Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
Language Proficiency in the EMI University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
The Linguistic Demands of Writing Academic Texts (from Sources) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
Where Are L2 Writers? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
Conclusion: Implications for Academic Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

Abstract
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 sophisti-
cation. 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 inexpe-
rienced 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
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.

D. Pecorari (*)
Department of Languages, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden
e-mail: diane.pecorari@lnu.se

# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 537

T. Bretag (ed.), Handbook of Academic Integrity,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_69
538 D. Pecorari

Introduction

Plagiarism is in one respect considerably more complex than many of the issues
treated under the heading of academic integrity and dealt with in this volume: it is
simultaneously an integrity issue and a question of academic literacies. Or, more
accurately, the word “plagiarism” is used very broadly to describe both deliberate
transgressions of academic conventions and principles, such as buying an essay
from a cheat site, and acts which are artifacts of developing academic literacy.
As Jamieson (this volume) discussed, there is no universal agreement that
“plagiarism” is in fact an appropriate descriptor for the latter category. A number
of scholars have suggested that alternative terminology should be used (e.g., Petrić
2004), and the most commonly used alternative is patchwriting. This term, coined
by Howard (1995), has been widely adopted to describe a writing strategy which
involves heavy dependence on the language of sources and which is the result of the
writer not yet having developed a mature arsenal of skills for learning to produce
academic texts autonomously. Patchwriting thus has other causes than an intention
to deceive the reader. In this chapter, “patchwriting” will therefore be used to
indicate the use of sources in an inappropriate way where the intention of the writer
is not to cheat (this usage thus somewhat extends the act originally described with
that label by Howard). Plagiarism which is motivated by a desire to receive
unearned academic rewards will be referred to here as “prototypical plagiarism.”
Because it is not always conceptually useful or possible in practical terms to
distinguish between these two acts, the term “textual plagiarism” will be used as
an umbrella term covering both of these, and indeed any act which, on the evidence
of intertextual relationships and without taking into account the writer’s intentions,
appears to be plagiarism. When “plagiarism” alone appears, it will refer to this
broader category.
Another reason for the complexity of plagiarism is that it involves the illegiti-
mate appropriation of either ideas or language. While it is possible at a theoretical
level to distinguish between plagiarism of ideas and plagiarism of language, there is
considerable interaction between the two. For instance, while an idea can be the
object of plagiarism even if it is expressed in an entirely new way, it is often the
repetition of the wording of an earlier text which enables the plagiarism to be
detected or which is persuasive in convincing gatekeepers that plagiarism has in
fact occurred.
Language is thus more closely implicated in plagiarism than it is in other acts
which are regarded as threats to academic integrity, such as falsification of data or
unearned authorship credits. Because language is such a considerable concern in
plagiarism, the act has a particular set of ramifications for people who are writing
through the medium of a second language (L2) rather than a first language (L1).
That observation is true for all L2 writers, regardless of the specific second
language. However, the dominant lingua franca for academic activity is, as in so
many other spheres, English (Mauranen et al. 2016). Thus, the focus of this chapter
is on writers with English as a second language, although the points made here are
broadly true regardless of L2.
37 Plagiarism, International Students, and the Second-Language Writer 539

Precisely because of the dominant status of English as a lingua franca, English is

used in an extremely varied set of academic contexts worldwide. This chapter thus
begins with a description of the contexts in which L2 writers come into contact with
academic English. It then goes on to discuss a question which has frequently been
associated with plagiarism in the work of L2 writers, areas of possible cultural
differences, before moving on to treat the question of source use and academic
literacies. As noted above, plagiarism is both an ethics issue and a question of
learning; however, the former aspects have been dealt with thoroughly, in this
volume and elsewhere. In keeping with the focus of this section, this chapter is
therefore concerned with plagiarism as a learning/literacy issue. In order to learn to
handle new linguistic and rhetorical tasks, L2 writers need a certain level of
proficiency on which to build. The third part of this chapter therefore outlines the
linguistic abilities needed to write from sources in appropriate ways and looks at the
range of English proficiencies found in contexts where L2 writers are using English
as the medium of instruction (EMI). This chapter concludes with an examination of
the implications of the academic literacy question for academic integrity.
Before moving on, it should be noted that plagiarism is not an issue only for
student writers. It is natural to think of students in connection with questions of
learning and the acquisition of academic literacy, but the ability to use sources
effectively and in ways which do not trigger accusations of plagiarism is essential
for academic success at all levels, and episodes of plagiarism linked to the issues
particularly salient for second-language writers have been identified at all levels of
the academy (e.g., Flowerdew and Li 2007; Li and Casanave 2012). Because
students are a larger group than established academics, and for the sake of conve-
nience, this chapter will treat plagiarism primarily in regard to students. It should
however be read in an awareness that many of the points made apply to other
academic writers as well.

Contexts for English-Medium Instruction

The second half of the twentieth century saw a sweeping change to the university: in
the wake of the Second World War, international mobility among university
students began to rise dramatically. According to reports from the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development, in 1998 there were 1.31 million
international students at universities in OECD countries; by 2012 that number had
risen to 3.37 (OECD 2000, 2014). The growth in mobility is expected to continue,
as well, with a current prediction that by 2020 a demand will exist for half a million
international student places in the UK alone (Böhm et al. 2004).
English thus became the medium of instruction for substantial numbers of
students who had another L1 and who chose to study abroad in countries like the
USA, the UK, and Australia (the countries which are termed major English-
speaking destination countries or MESDCs). A more recent trend has been toward
international student mobility to other countries. For example, between 2003 and
2013, Sweden saw a 50 % increase in the number of international student
540 D. Pecorari

enrolments (Statistiska Centralbyrån 2013). In 2012, 7 % of university enrolments

were international students in Denmark, 7 % in the Netherlands, and 5 % in Finland
(OECD 2014). In the same year, and according to the same report, only a quarter of
international students traveled to countries which used the same language as their
home country. In other words, the majority of international mobility is enabled by
the use of a lingua franca, and that lingua franca is most often English. In 2013
European universities offered 21,000 master’s programs, and over 6,000 of them
were offered in English, an increase from under 1,000 in 2002 (Brenn-White and
Faethe 2013). EMI is the engine behind internationalization, and the expansion of
EMI outside of the English-speaking world has not only enabled international
student mobility to those countries, it has created another constituency of students
working through a second language: those who have stayed at home but attend
courses taught in English. Beyond the desire to enable internationalization, this
situation has arisen in part because of a perceived value in exposing students to
English. Because of the role of English as global lingua franca, there is a wide-
spread belief that students who emerge from university with skills in English will be
more competitive in the workplace and a concomitant belief that EMI provides
exposure to the language (Pecorari et al. 2011).
Thus, there exist a number of diverse student groups grappling with the demands of
acquiring academic literacy in English as L2: those who have chosen to travel to an
English-speaking country, those who have chosen an English-medium program in a
non-English-speaking country, those students’ classmates who have stayed at home
but are enrolled on courses taught in English, and students around the world who are
engaged in education primarily in their L1 but who have some elements of English
present as well. The steep demands of developing academic literacy are intensified by
the use of a second language, as Section 4, “Academic Integrity Policy and Practice”
demonstrates, and the numbers of students put in this position are large and growing.

Culture in the Academic Literacy Equation

A factor which has frequently been implicated in plagiarism among English L2

users is an area closely related to language: culture. The cultural explanation for
plagiarism has most frequently (though not exclusively) been invoked with respect
to students from various Asian countries (Chien 2014; Moon 2002; Shi 2006). This
explanation rests on the idea that there is in the Western educational establishment a
fairly stable understanding of plagiarism and that there is at least one alternative
understanding which causes students to do what their teachers call plagiarism, even
though they are not motivated by a desire to transgress. For example, it is some-
times asserted that students from cultures with a collectivist orientation do not
appreciate the importance which is placed upon individual expression in the West
and therefore do not understand that authorial rights are seriously abridged by
plagiarism. Another variation on the cultural explanation relates to a supposed
authority gap that causes students to have an extreme degree of respect for their
teachers and for the written word. Repeating the language of canonical texts is
37 Plagiarism, International Students, and the Second-Language Writer 541

respectful to their authors, while paraphrasing would be disrespectful. The teacher

as the ultimate authority is perfectly familiar with the canonical texts on a topic, and
so citing them would be both superfluous (since the teacher will recognize them)
and disrespectful (inasmuch as it would suggest that the teacher might fail to
recognize them). Other versions of the cultural explanation have been offered
as well.
The cultural explanation has been hotly contested in the literature. Some
observers are adamant about the existence of culturally grounded explanations as
a contributing factor for some student plagiarism, while others, including “cultural
insiders,” argue equally adamantly that this is not the case (see Pecorari and Petrić
2014, for a review). Despite the uncertainty on this question, by probing the cultural
explanation, it is possible to shed light on several important points related to
plagiarism particularly as it interacts with L2 literacy.
First, it is instructive that much of the difficulty in resolving this question lies in
the fact that the precondition named above is not fulfilled: to claim correctly that
students from some cultures do not share a Western understanding of plagiarism,
there must be such a thing as a shared and stable Western understanding of the
concept. Yet we know that Western academics as well as students are inconsistent
in what they identify as plagiarism (Roig 1997, 2001) and that this is due in part to
the fact that their understandings are highly contingent and contextualized (Pecorari
and Shaw 2012). Many are unwilling or unable to implement abstract definitions of
plagiarism. When faced with a student text which is similar to its source, they feel it
matters whether the potential plagiarism involves functional and formulaic aspects
of the text or its findings, whether specialist terminology which cannot easily be
altered is involved, or whether an attempt has been made to cite a source (e.g., in the
reference list), even if it is not an entirely successful attempt. These differing
understandings are due in part to varying approaches to writing across disciplinary
cultures (Borg 2009; Jamieson 2008) but equally due to individual differences
(Pecorari and Shaw 2012).
A second point of importance about the cultural explanation is that it simulta-
neously rests upon and exposes an Anglophone dominance in global scholarship
which can particularly be challenged outside of the MESDCs. All students, regard-
less of their first language or status as international students, can be expected to
follow the rules in place at their institutions, but if plagiarism is a matter of
academic ethics, then something more than local regulations is at stake: plagiarism
must challenge the basic values of scholarly activity, and these values must be
universal, at least within the scholarly domain. If factors inherent in some cultures
cause a predisposition to plagiarize, then plagiarism does not violate a universal
academic value; it violates a belief locally situated in the English-speaking world. If
this is true – that plagiarism is a violation of a locally defined set of values rather
than a universally acknowledged set of scholarly values – then the relevance of an
Anglophone understanding of plagiarism in many EMI contexts is unclear. In
simple terms, why should a university student in country X adhere to principles
for source use which apply in the USA or Australia, for example, but which do not
have wide cultural currency in country X?
542 D. Pecorari

This inconsistency is easy to overlook because it is partially obscured by the

fact that there are in fact two Englishes: the one which is the local language of
universities in the MESDCs and the one which is the global lingua franca in
academic life (as well as in many other spheres of endeavor). A strong argument
can be made that Anglophone cultural values should be respected in the English-
speaking world, but the corresponding argument, that Anglophone cultural
values should steer local practice in the rest of the world, would, if articulated
in such a direct manner, rightly attract criticisms of cultural imperialism. Quite
importantly, this discussion is not intended to argue either for or against the
existence of a particular non-Anglophone understanding of plagiarism; as noted
above, the available evidence is rather divided on that point. Rather,
it is intended to expose a fundamental contradiction between the cultural
explanation and the assumption of plagiarism as a violation of fundamental
academic values.
A third important issue regarding the cultural explanation is a potential danger
in how it is used. Because it is framed in terms of a specific, erroneous under-
standing of plagiarism which diverges from an assumed, received understanding
of that act, a great deal of emphasis is placed on awareness. If international
students from country X do not understand what plagiarism is, then they need
an explanation. At a minimum, they need to know what it is and what penalties it
incurs. Because the penalties can be very severe, they also need to understand how
very seriously plagiarism is regarded. This is not a small rule which can be broken
with impunity; it is a serious matter. So far, this is good pedagogy: knowledge of
the regulatory framework is a good thing for all students. However, teachers who
believe that plagiarism is caused by a simple cultural misunderstanding are then
likely to assume that, once students have had an explanation, the problem is fixed,
and if plagiarism occurs thereafter it is not the lack of information but deliberate
dishonesty which causes it. In fact, though, the reality is more complex. Producing
writing which is free from textual plagiarism requires more than a desire to do so;
as the next section will demonstrate, it requires a complex set of academic literacy
skills.

Language Proficiency in the EMI University

It is in the nature of academic activity to build on earlier work. A scholarly

responsibility exists to have read one’s way into the topic one writes about, and as
a result most academic texts contain prolific references to the works which the
writer has read and which have the potential to inform the topic at hand. This has
two important implications for novice academic writers. First, it is not possible to
avoid plagiarism simply by avoiding writing from sources altogether; plagiarism
can only be avoided if the writer can also incorporate material from sources in a
proficient way. Second, because the use of sources is so fundamental to academic
writing, simply learning to avoid plagiarism cannot and should not be the only or
indeed the primary objective. Novice academic writers need to learn to use
37 Plagiarism, International Students, and the Second-Language Writer 543

sources effectively in their writing. However, using sources is a linguistically

complex aspect of academic writing. This section first describes some of the
linguistic demands of source-based writing and then looks at the expectations
which can reasonably be made of the language proficiency of L2 writers in EMI
contexts.

The Linguistic Demands of Writing Academic Texts (from Sources)

Academic language is widely perceived as polysyllabic, complex, and dense, and a

number of characteristic features are responsible for this effect. For example,
academic texts are rich in nominalizations, that is, forms which consist of a process
which is expressed as a noun, e.g., consolidation of porous media means that porous
media are consolidated by someone or something; the nominalized version packs
the same meaning into half the number of words. Another easily recognizable
feature of academic discourse is the use of words which are relatively uncommon
in everyday language, such as consolidation or aversion or mediating (Gardner and
Davies 2014). There are also commonly occurring phrases like One of the limita-
tions on this approach is that . . . and The graph shows that there has been a steady
increase in. . . (Morley, n.d.). These features are a by-product of the need to discuss
complicated topics with great precision and weave strands of evidence and reason-
ing into the fabric of the new text, but a side effect is that these features can cause
students to perceive academic texts as difficult both to read and to produce.
What linguistics skills do academic writers need to be able to perform in order to
read the existing literature on a topic and produce texts which build on them
successfully? Reading comprehension is a key factor, and that in turn is closely
related to vocabulary knowledge: readers need to know more than 95 % of the
words in a text in order to be able to understand the text satisfactorily (Hu and
Nation 2000). Not very many unknown words like aversion or consolidation are
needed, then, to keep readers from understanding academic texts. Reading speed is
also a factor; university students with English as a second language have been
shown to perform as well on reading tests as native speakers of English, but reading
for that degree of comprehension takes longer (Shaw and McMillion 2008). Speed
and comprehension are critical because good source use requires more than the
ability to report a proposition from an earlier text without distorting it; it also
requires the writer to understand the relationships among the various contributions
to the literature and to be able to synthesize them.
Assuming that a writer has read and understood the relevant texts on a topic,
successfully referring to them involves two productive abilities (Pecorari 2016). In
most academic disciplines, references to sources consist primarily or exclusively of
paraphrases, that is, a restatement of a proposition from a source in a fundamentally
independent way, but without distortion. This is a linguistically challenging task,
but arguably more challenging still is the ability to quote, since that involves
incorporating someone else’s wording into one’s own text in such a way that the
interface is coherent and fluent.
544 D. Pecorari

Ideally, the text will be well written in other ways too. For L2 users of English,
this means avoiding grammatical errors and unidiomatic expression, but it also
means – for all writers – producing the characteristic discoursal features of aca-
demic language: the rich vocabulary, the nominalizations, etc. In this connection it
is important to note that productive skills build on receptive ones. That is, the ability
to use phrases like this view has received qualified support from scholars such as. . .
presupposes the ability to understand it, but the reverse is not true; understanding
does not confer the ability to produce comparable writing oneself.
At this point it is possible to observe that the novice academic writer must
actually try to meet two quite different objectives. One is to produce acceptable
academic writing. This includes, but is not limited to, making effective and
conventional use of sources, and to do that, avoiding plagiarism is a necessary
but not a sufficient condition. However, because any kind of textual plagiarism risks
being diagnosed as an act of deception and because the penalties for deceptive
plagiarism are so harsh, in practical terms writers must also have the objective of
avoiding writing in ways which can trigger the accusation of plagiarism. It is
possible that a weighty concern with not incurring the “academic death penalty”
(Howard 1995) may inhibit writers from extending themselves and venturing into
less certain terrain and may therefore cause them to miss opportunities for skill
development.

Where Are L2 Writers?

As the last section demonstrated, producing texts which do not put the writer at risk
of accusations of plagiarism requires the ability to use sources in appropriate ways,
and that in turn requires rather sophisticated language skills. It is therefore impor-
tant to ensure that students in EMI environments have the necessary skills. Institu-
tions use varied means to assess the language skills of prospective students on EMI
courses, but it is particularly common to require applicants to submit a score on an
internationally recognized test such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language
(TOEFL), the Pearson Test of English (PTE), or the International English Language
Testing System (IELTS). Students receive a numerical score but not a result
expressed as a pass or a fail; instead, institutions set a minimum score for
admissions.
What does this mean about students’ abilities in practice? Taking the IELTS as
an example, a sample of the admissions criteria used by the prestigious and
selective Russell Group of universities in the UK shows that undergraduates are
typically required to attain a score between 6 and 7 for admission, with lower scores
more likely to be accepted for courses in science and technical subjects and higher
scores required for subjects in the humanities and social sciences. IELTS scores
range from 0 to 9, with 0 reserved for empty answer sheets and individuals scoring
1 described as “nonusers” of English. A score of 9 indicates that the test taker “has
fully operational command” of English (IELTS, n.d.). Scores in the range of 6 and
7, the higher end of the spectrum, indicate:
37 Plagiarism, International Students, and the Second-Language Writer 545

Band 7: Good user: has operational command of the language, though with occasional
inaccuracies, inappropriacies and misunderstandings in some situations. Generally handles
complex language well and understands detailed reasoning.
Band 6: Competent user: has generally effective command of the language despite
some inaccuracies, inappropriacies and misunderstandings. Can use and understand fairly
complex language, particularly in familiar situations. (IELTS, n.d.)

Attaining this level of proficiency in a second language is a significant achieve-

ment, but given the nature of the demands placed on students, there are potential
problems. “Occasional inaccuracies, inappropriacies and misunderstandings” could
be a significant obstacle to success on assessed work, and the ability to “understand
fairly complex language” is required of all students, while the university setting is
an unfamiliar situation, including for L1 users of English.
Thus, students who are admitted to degree programs with the relatively high
degree of English proficiency indicated by these high-end IELTS scores (or the
equivalent on other measures) will still find the discoursal challenges of studying
through the medium of English to be substantial. Many writers adopt patchwriting
as a response to these challenges, to bridge the gap in their understandings of
sources and to achieve texts which are more fluent, accurate, and idiomatic. This is
not a strategy unique to L2 users of English. Howard et al. (2010) studied the texts
of a group consisting of primarily L1 users of English and identified a considerable
amount of patchwriting. However, students with weaker language skills still have
additional reasons to adopt a patchwriting strategy.
In fact, though, the situation is more problematic still, as not all students
studying through the medium of English around the world have even the level of
proficiency which the benchmark scores presented above suggest. Lower scores
may be accepted, exceptions may be made, less reliable tests may be used to
measure proficiency, or alternative experiences (such as prior university study)
may be used as a token of English proficiency. In short, many students attempt to
study through the medium of English without ideal preconditions for success.

Conclusion: Implications for Academic Integrity

This chapter began by suggesting that plagiarism is not always a question of

academic integrity because it is not always a form of cheating. Not being able to
write effective academic texts which observe source use conventions is no more
unethical than not knowing how to solve differential equations or how to perform a
titration or how to analyze an Elizabethan sonnet. Yet when writers’ skills are
unequal to the task of producing fluent academic texts, patchwriting is often the
result. Because doing academic work in a second language is a tremendous chal-
lenge, second-language writers are frequently put in this position. A conclusion
which has often been drawn from this (e.g., Pecorari 2008) is that in addition to
effective interventions aimed at preventing deceptive plagiarism, much
patchwriting can be prevented by aligning writers’ skill levels with the expectations
placed upon them.
546 D. Pecorari

However, although it is necessary, both in theory and in pedagogical practice, to

distinguish between the sorts of plagiarism which are deceptive and the sorts which
are not, there are several areas in which patchwriting interacts with deceptive
plagiarism (areas which are not exclusive to L2 writers, though for the reasons
indicated above they are especially relevant to them). This section describes those
areas in order to conclude with implications for academic ethics.
First, the distinction between patchwriting and prototypical plagiarism is most
tangible in the extreme. A student who commissions a ghostwriter is engaging in
deceptive behavior, and it would be difficult to argue otherwise. Some textual
plagiarism is manifestly caused by some degree of confusion about what is permitted
and would be accepted as having a nondeceptive cause by even the most skeptical
teachers. In between these extremes, though, are less clear-cut possibilities. A student
may be aware that certain writing strategies are less than best practice but still believe
they are permitted, or may accept that repeating words from a source without using
quotation marks is against the rules but believe it to be a minor infraction rather than a
breach of serious principles for academic integrity. In this middle zone, students can
be in need of both long-term development of their academic literacy skills and better
acquaintance with their university’s code of conduct.
Another point of interaction between patchwriting and deceptive plagiarism is
that if patchwriting is not a threat to academic integrity, it is frequently a threat to
academic quality. Patchwriting evidences an inability to find independent ways of
expressing complex ideas in the appropriate academic register, and there are many
important forms of summative assessment which require that ability. Patchwriting
may also be symptomatic of other underlying problems, such as a difficulty in
reading academic texts and understanding them or in integrating ideas from several
sources. It has been suggested that patchwriting is a developmental stage and
potentially beneficial (Howard 1999; Hull and Rose 1989), but similarly, it can
serve as evidence that the writer’s skills are still developing. In other words,
patchwriting frequently is a sign that students have not achieved the learning
objectives on which they are assessed. In this sense, diagnosing patchwriting is as
important as diagnosing deceptive plagiarism.
The final area of interaction between patchwriting and deceptive plagiarism is
that, while an inability to use sources proficiently is not a sign of an ethical
shortcoming, it may be the proximate cause of one. Patchwriting is not only the
result of writers lacking the proficiencies to write from sources in conventional and
acceptable ways. Many people – butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, tinkers,
tailors, soldiers, and spies – lack those proficiencies, but it is unproblematic because
they do not need them. Patchwriting is what happens when writers who have not yet
developed those skills are confronted with tasks which can only successfully be
performed by someone who possesses them. As would be expected, the available
evidence tends to suggest that the ability to use sources appropriately and effec-
tively develops alongside other academic writing skills, and thus source use ability
is likely to be still under development in less experienced academic writers (e.g.,
Campbell 1990; Davis 2013). There is also evidence of a correlation between
cheating and a sense of academic pressure. Weaker academic performers report
37 Plagiarism, International Students, and the Second-Language Writer 547

plagiarizing more (Selwyn 2008), and fear of failing a course makes students more
likely to plagiarize (Bennett 2005). Thus, while patchwriting itself is not a decep-
tive strategy, placing students in a space which provides the preconditions for
patchwriting may also increase the likelihood of deceptive plagiarism.
These elements, taken together, suggest that while patchwriting and plagiarism
are theoretically distinct constructs, they have commonalities and therefore poten-
tially shared solutions. It is important, though, to define that shared territory
carefully. Specifically, the typical approaches to prototypical plagiarism, consisting
of warning, detecting, and punishing, are only of minimal help in dealing with
patchwriting. It is right that students should be aware that inappropriate source use
can put them at risk of accusations of plagiarism, but punishment is never an
appropriate response to the failure to master a skill, and honest students who intend
to do their level best may well ignore warnings about an act which is characterized
as deceptive and unethical.
However, if the standard approach to prototypical plagiarism is a poor response
to patchwriting, the reverse is not true: a good approach to patchwriting is also
beneficial in combatting deceptive plagiarism. The most effective way of dealing
with patchwriting is to teach students to use sources effectively. Good teaching
incorporates the principles of constructive alignment: learning objectives are iden-
tified and explicitly stated, teaching and learning activities are developed with the
objectives in mind, and the assessment measures the extent to which they have been
attained (Biggs 1996). In the case of source use, these points are often neglected: in
most subjects, the ability to produce academic texts is expected of students but not
taught, and the effective and appropriate use of sources is rarely systematically
assessed (Pecorari 2013).
A pedagogy for good source use would include formulating objectives such as
“upon completion of this course, the student will be able to read, understand, and
effectively paraphrase concepts from relevant texts” and then designing a series of
tasks which would teach and allow students to practice these skills. Equipping students
with a clear vision of the objective and the ability to reach it would do much to
eliminate patchwriting. It would provide an effective mechanism for dealing with
patchwriting when it does occur in a non-stigmatizing way, because the message is not,
primarily, that the student has done wrong but that the student still has a way to go.
In the context of what is, or is believed or suspected to be deliberate, deceptive
plagiarism, the same mechanism can be equally useful. Most universities have a
framework of rules under which prototypical plagiarism is identified as a violation
and mechanisms for punishing it. Most university teachers have experience of the
mechanisms working imperfectly, and virtually all have experience of cases which
have made them uncomfortable because they were uncertain of the student’s
culpability, while being very confident that the student’s written work was not
acceptable. A mechanism which, outside the formal disciplinary procedures, allows
the teacher to withhold academic rewards is as useful in cases of prototypical
plagiarism as it is in cases of patchwriting and especially valuable in those cases
which make it difficult to distinguish between the two. Importantly, though, if a
teacher (as opposed to a disciplinary instance) withholds grades or other awards,
548 D. Pecorari

it must be done with reference to the fact that the student has not demonstrated
attainment of the learning objectives and not punitively.
Because L2 writers are particularly affected by the degree of linguistic compe-
tence which study through the medium of English requires, they are in urgent need
of a means of addressing plagiarism which is proactive and pedagogical, but they
are not alone in this need. Two global trends in higher education – broadening
participation and an increase in English-medium instruction – have led to larger and
more heterogeneous student populations. This broadened student body includes
groups such as Generation 1.5, students who immigrated to the country of study at
an early age and who are likely to appear to university admissions processes as
domestic students. Such students frequently have uneven abilities in what has been
termed basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) as opposed to cognitive
academic language proficiency (CALP) (Cummins 2008). In other words, they may
be fluent and experience no apparent problems in everyday situations, but that
fluency may mask a need for support with academic discourse. Generation 1.5
students illustrate a broader point about the heterogeneity of the modern university:
fewer assumptions can be made about the preparation and prior knowledge with
which students arrive at university, and the numbers limit the likelihood that those
who are insufficiently prepared will be able to elevate themselves to the required
level by their own bootstraps.
This makes it difficult to reach any other conclusion than that universities have
both a responsibility and every interest in teaching the literacy skills which under-
pin academic writing. Doing so would enable students (L2 as well as L1) to avoid
plagiarism and other sorts of inappropriate source use, but, more importantly,
would empower them to engage successfully with academic discourse in other
ways as well. The motivation must surely be there: universities commit significant
resources to addressing issues of integrity and are prepared to mete out harsh
penalties to students who violate rules of academic ethics. This is evidence that
the academic community believes that integrity is a very serious matter which
merits a very serious response. If this is true, then there must be a concomitant will
to take the steps which will have the greatest impact both on deceptive plagiarism
and patchwriting in L1 as well as L2 writers, to admit only those students with good
preconditions for learning to produce plagiarism-free academic writing, and to see
to it that all students who are admitted are given sufficient teaching to have a
reasonable chance of success. If academic institutions really want to stop plagia-
rism, these are the steps which must be taken. If we are not willing to take them,
then it reflects very badly indeed on the integrity of academics.

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