The main reasons of plagiarism are students’ laziness and current educational methods. Digital generation is used to find everything they need on the Internet, Google books and Amazon.com provide tens of thousands of books’ preview. Admittedly, it saves time of looking for books in the library and selecting useful chapters. However, Answers.com and Answers.Yahoo are slightly different, everyone can post their thoughts online anonymously, sometimes it is difficult to find the first writer. Therefore some students choose to copy ideas without citation rather than reading books. Also, some international students and domestic wealth students prefer to pay others to write an essay for them. This kind of plagiarism is hard to detect, but can be prevented by improved educational methods. Current education system also plays a role in plagiarism. For example in China, students do not have lessons on quoting, paraphrasing or citation, even in the universities. Therefore, some Chinese students who are not able to adapt to western style reference will have a large possibility to commit plagiarism unconsciously.
Arousing students’ motivations, as well as improving educational methods are two ways to eradicate plagiarism in universities. Firstly, teachers can let students choose their favorite topics instead of giving the only one. Most plagiarism happens because students are not interested in the topic or they are not familiar with the part of knowledge. By letting students have their own choice, not only can they have a motivation but also a good quality essay. Secondly, teachers can check the working process occasionally. Students can split writing processes into several steps, such as submitting the first, second and final draft. Thirdly, arranging group discussions and peer advisors encourages students supervising each other.
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