Blog6

Based on culture gap, international students are the group of people suffering worst from plagiarism because of different education background from American students, language barrier, and pressure of failure on school. These distinctions, produced by culture, hinder international students to go through the “cheating” issue. In many countries especially Asian ones, awareness of plagiarism is not built both among teachers and students. Conversely, they often have their own ways to understanding or distinguish what is plagiarism. As an international student from China, I experience the dilemma personally in OSU. In China, we do not need to paraphrase but just pick up some sentences directly from reference books and often it is not necessary for us to note where the quotations come from. In the other hand, how to paraphrase correctly is another problem international students have to face inevitably. Most of them live in their hometown for over ten years, learning English as second language, so it is unrealistic to expect they can understand the materials as appropriately as Native American speakers. As a result, sometimes they have no choice but just copy the same content since they can’t find another words to replace or sentences to explain it.

Not only international students but also native American students feel confused and frustrated about plagiarism on account for lacking of communication between educators and students. From students’ knowledge, “cheating” means copying others’ answers in exams secretly instead of using some text from books. “We buy these books, so they belong to us, right? So why I can’t take something from them and put into my paper?” Many students may wonder that and they have reason to put forward this question. In the true-life, students see presidents using speech paper written by secretaries, professor showing videos, definitions, and pictures from internet or works of other scientists in their lectures, bosses adopting ideas come up by employees like CEOs. The outside society misleads students to believe that they can directly use something that originally not belong to them. What’s worse, in schools, many educators are trying to play a stick role, warning students they cannot commit academic misconduct without telling them why and how. Teachers do not solve students’ bewilderment. Attribute to the miscommunication, it is not strange that students are perplexed on why they are accused as “stealers”.