Korean University Students' Awareness of Plagiarism in Summary Writings

Abstract

The present study examines Korean university students' awareness of plagiarism in summary writings. Twenty nine university students were asked to write English summaries of an English source text. They were then given the instruction on what is plagiarism and why they should avoid it. Finally, they were again asked to write the second summary writings of the same source text. The degrees of exact copying in the first and second summaries were compared based on the meaningful unit. The results showed that a 3-hour class session, which mainly focused on the warnings against plagiarism, had an enormous effect on the reduction of the copying degree in students' summary writing. The students illustrated the ability to summarize the text in their own words in the second summaries. They mainly copied in the first summary because they lacked the understanding of the notion of plagiarism It was suggested that students should be informed of the concept of plagiarism and be trained to paraphrase and write in their own words.