The Contribution of Plagiarism Detection Tool to Students’ Academic

Writing Behavior

Evi Karlina Ambarwati

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No.229 Bandung, Indonesia

evikarlina@upi.edu

Keywords: Academic writing, students’ attitude, Turnitin.

Abstract: The technology application for English as a Foreign Language in tertiary education can be a double-edged

sword. On the one side, it offers unlimited access to various open sources which intensifies plagiarism

opportunity. On the other side, technology generates software tools to combat the academic dishonesty

practices. This study aimed at investigating the benefit of a primary plagiarism detection tool, Turnitin, to the

students’ academic writing behavior. More specifically, this study sought the students’ attitude towards

plagiarism, the application of the plagiarism detection tool and the contribution of Turnitin to their academic

writing behavior. Employing exploratory study, this small-scaled investigation exploited the benefit of

technology to gather response from 18 students enrolled in an Academic Writing Class in a language centre

in Indonesia via online questionnaires and interview. The findings showed that while the students viewed

plagiarism negatively, they deemed Turnitin positively to encourage academic honesty. This research

demonstrates that Turnitin is likely to promote positive behaviour in writing in academic context.

1 INTRODUCTION

The advancement of technology in the academic

writing in English as a Foreign Language (EFL)

setting contributes in both negative and positive

directions. Due to the timely copy-paste access

provided by the Internet, the issue of unacceptable

digital text borrowing, which is cultural and

contextual in nature, escalates (Ledwith and Rísquez,

2008; Pennycook, 2016; Walker, 2010). Nonetheless,

there are various tools to examine the academic

dishonesty practice, one of which is Turnitin.

Studies across the education settings in the UK,

US, Ireland and Hongkong suggest that such tool

should be utilized as an education tool (Ledwith and

Rísquez, 2008; Youmans, 2011; Vie, 2013; Chew,

Ding and Rowell, 2015; Pennycook, 2016). Likewise,

care should be taken in several aspects, such as the

interpretation of the similarity report (Chew et al,

2015; Paul, 2012; Walker, 2010) and ethical issue

(Youmans, 2011; Vie, 2013).

Presented these facts, the current study aimed to

balance the investigation by providing insight from

the EFL setting. This study sought the educational

benefit of Turnitin, i.e. to foster the students’ positive

academic writing behavior. More specifically, this

study examined the students’ attitude towards

plagiarism, the application of the plagiarism detection

tool and the contribution of Turnitin to their academic

writing behavior. The next sections will subsequently

describe some research which investigated the use of

software to mold students’ academic writing attitude

as well as behavior and the method of this research.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

Pennycook (1996) proposed the fact that writing in

second language learning context should be regarded

as a process of words borrowing. However,

boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable need to be

flexibly set. Therefore, the issue of plagiarism among

language learners needs to be educational in nature,

not punitive. Also, it is important to highlight that the

timely cut-paste practice is highly cultural

(Pennycook, 1996; LoCastro and Masuko, 2002).

Attempts to reveal the students’ attitude towards

plagiarism have been made and several looked

through the cultural perspective. On a study

conducted by Ehrich et al. (2014), it was found that

Australian and Chinese students who study

domestically had negative attitude towards

140

Ambarwati, E.

The Contribution of Plagiarism Detection Tool to Students’ Academic Writing Behavior.

DOI: 10.5220/0007163401400144

In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference

on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 140-144

ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2

plagiarism. Nevertheless, the Australian students had

a significantly more negative attitude towards

plagiarism compared to the Chinese students. They

highlighted the cross-cultural attitudes the two group

hold that the Chinese students were permissive

towards inappropriate text borrowings that were

conducted with permission and under heavy

workload conditions. This might reflect the collective

responsibility the Chinese community holds

compared to the individual stance of Australians.

Likewise, LoCastro and Masuko (2002) who

disclosed Japanese students’ view on plagiarism

found that aside from the lack of L2 language

proficiency and training, their attitude was shaped by

sociocultural factors. This is due to the fact that prior

to WWII, only the elites were able to go to school and

that the Japanese curriculum has focused on the

content knowledge that it does not teach basic

academic skill, i.e. writing.

In line with these findings, a study conducted in

Malaysian tertiary education setting also found that

the students admitted their acts of academic

dishonesty. Unexpectedly, following one semester of

formal instruction on academic reading and writing,

the participants’ view on plagiarism was unchanged

(Law, Ting and Jerome, 2013). The study measured

the students’ attitude by the penalty they prefer and

the fact that they preferred counselling despite their

misconduct shows that their attitude is culturally

shaped.

Another body of research looked into the students’

authorial identity as a measure the students’

unintentional plagiarism (Pittam et al., 2009;

Ballantine and McCourt Larres, 2012). The

parameters of authorial identity were ‘confidence in

writing’, ‘understanding authorship’ and ‘knowledge

to avoid plagiarism’. The participants in both studies

had under-developed authorial identities which were

likely to correlate with their status as learners.

In regards to the growing students’ improper text

borrowing which opportunity is enlarged by the

Internet (Pennycook, 2016), there are many strategies

that language teachers can utilize to educate, if not to

eliminate the academic dishonesty practices. One of

the strategies is using plagiarism detection software

as part of the pedagogical practice to foster negative

attitude and practice towards plagiarism. As research

suggest (Ledwith and Rísquez, 2008; Youmans,

2011; Vie, 2013; Chew, Ding and Rowell, 2015;

Pennycook, 2016), such software should be used for

education purpose.

Turnitin is a primary plagiarism detection tool

which is popular and convenient. It is licenced in 126

countries and available in 10 languages (Stapleton,

2012). It generates “similarity report” that is easy to

read and colour coded as well as scores for students’

work (Dahl, 2007). The report highlights the

similarity of the text to the sources in the Internet and

their database, displays the similarity in percentage

and shows the sources’ websites. Likewise, the

software is time-saving (Vie, 2013).

Several studies across education contexts revealed

mixed results of the effectiveness of Turnitin in

combating the academic dishonesty. In English as the

first language education contexts, Ledwith and

Rísquez (2008) and Chew, Ding and Rowell (2015)

found that Turnitin discouraged the students to

plagiarize. The Irish students participated in the

research conducted by Ledwith and Rísquez (2008)

generally had positive attitude towards Turnitin.

Also, there was a decrease of Internet plagiarism. The

students, nevertheless, had greater awareness about

the academic dishonesty practises. The awareness

made them feel more responsible that they were

forced to put extra effort into writing. Similarly,

Chew, Ding and Rowell (2015) believed that Turnitin

promote a good assessment for learning utility.

Nevertheless, experiment in the U.S. setting found

that despite the treatment, there was no difference in

the academic dishonesty practices among the

experimental and control group. Therefore, it is

suggested that Turnitin failed to promote students’

plagiarism (Youmans, 2011). Inversely, an

experiment conducted in second language graduate

learners in Hong Kong revealed that there was a

significant difference in the plagiarism that Turnitin

successfully deterred students to plagiarise

(Stapleton, 2012).

All in all, these varied findings show that students’

academic dishonesty is highly cultural and attempts

to instil writing ethics to students are greatly

contextual. Moreover, findings across studies show

the value of Turnitin towards students’ plagiarism.

Therefore, it is worthwhile to consider Turnitin as an

alternative to promote positive academic behavior.

This study offers a perspective of the use of Turnitin

as a tool to instil academic writing positive values and

practices in Indonesia context.

3 METHOD

This research used a qualitative methodology

including online questionnaire and interview to

explore the benefit of Turnitin to students’ academic

writing behaviour. The participants were 18

Indonesian master’s degree scholarship awardees

from different majors. They enrolled in the Academic

The Contribution of Plagiarism Detection Tool to Students’ Academic Writing Behavior

141

Writing Class which was part of a 6-month-English

language training program in a language centre in

Indonesia. They were trained several techniques to

avoid plagiarism, such as paraphrasing, in-text

citation, quoting, and referencing. One of the final

assignments was research essay. They were well-

informed about the use of Turnitin to check the

originality of their essay.

To gather their attitude towards plagiarism and

application of Turnitin, an online open-ended

questionnaire was developed in Google Forms

application and distributed via email. These data were

supplemented by audio-recorded, semistructured

interviews with the participants of approximately 10

minutes. These interviews queried their perspective

on Turnitin (i.e., what are the possible reasons for

plagiarizing? Have you intentionally or

unintentionally plagiarized? Have you heard about

plagiarism detection tool, such as Turnitin, prior to

the class? How do you feel about examining the

similarity of your essay through Turnitin? and How

Turnitin change your view on plagiarism?)

The data were analyzed inductively (Creswell,

2012) and were coded line by line and compared

among the data to capture the participants attitude

towards plagiarism and Turnitin as well as the effect

of Turnitin towards their academic writing behavior.

4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Plagiarism: Students’ Attitude

The majority of participants (n=17) were familiar

with plagiarism due to the information given during

their undergraduate study. In the Academic Writing

Class, they were provided with further information

and practices regarding techniques to avoid

plagiarism. The questionnaire and interview revealed

that they showed strong attitude against academic

dishonesty. As presented in Table 1, they claimed that

plagiarism is unacceptable, disrespectful, rule

violation, and untrustworthy.

Table 1: Students’ attitude on plagiarism.

Plagiarism is …

 stealing ideas

 disrespectful

 unrecognized works &

disrespectful

 copying

 unacceptable

 useless & untrustworthy

 a mistake

 violating the rule

 author’s need to learn to

write and cite

This finding demonstrates that they highly value

ideas and effort in producing a text. They also

believed that original ideas might no longer exist that

academicians have been modifying previous works.

Therefore, the participants highlighted the need for

proper recognition of others’ works as to appreciate

their works. Indeed, Pennycook’s (1996) emphasise

on the border between acceptable and unacceptable

text borrowing indicates the inexistence of originality

and confines the importance of authorship

recognition.

The participants’ negative view on plagiarism was

also reflected in their text ownership. Interestingly,

the participants of this study had strong text

ownership in the context of published works but were

permissive towards plagiarism in the context of class

assignments. In the context of published works, such

as journal articles, the participants emphasized on the

mutual benefits, i.e. popularity and ranks, the authors

and cited works would gain. In contrast, few of them

(n=5) expressed an ample amount of understanding

towards unattributed textual borrowings in class

assignments because they valued collaboration.

This is in line with the highly cultural and

contextual factors related to text ownership and

plagiarism attitude (Pennycook, 1996; LoCastro and

Masuko, 2002; Pittam et al., 2009; Vie, 2013; Ehrich

et al., 2014). As opposed to the highly text ownership

among students in the US (Vie, 2013) and European

countries (Pennycook, 1996; Ledwith and Rísquez,

2008), the participants of this study had mixed text

ownership relative to the contexts as found in studies

conducted by Pittam et al. (2009) and Ballantine and

McCourt Larres (2012).

All in all, the participants’ plagiarism attitude is

shaped by their text originality concept and text

ownership. They admitted the unoriginal nature of

texts and the need for recognition that they viewed

plagiarism negatively.

4.2 Turnitin: Students’ Attitude

Turnitin is a primary plagiarism detection tool widely

used in high education institutions across the globe.

The participants generally had positive attitude

towards Turnitin. Research looked into the use of

Turnitin suggested that it should be used as a support

tool in recognising the plagiarism (Ledwith and

CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

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Rísquez, 2008; Stapleton, 2012; Heckler, Rice and

Hobson Bryan, 2013; Chew, Ding and Rowell, 2015).

The participants, who were equipped with anti-

plagiarism strategies during the class, admitted their

confidence in writing. Despite their knowledge and

confidence, the participants claimed to be cautious

over the result of their similarity check by Turnitin.

As, summarised in Table 2, Turnitin was an alarm

which allowed the participants to be aware of the

proper citation, paraphrase, and reference of their

text.

Table 2: Students’ attitude on Turnitin.

In what way Turnitin helps

you to detect and avoid

plagiarism?

Will you use

Turnitin in the

future?

 Very good & detect

plagiarism

 Facilitate plagiarism

detection

 Very good: detects

plagiarism & stimulates

creativity

 Cautious in citing

 Builds awareness of

plagiarism

 Good: promotes honesty

 Very good: promotes

innovation

 Very helpful

 Good: detect plagiarism &

allows revision

 Good: appreciate others’

works

 Very good: it’s an alarm

 Yes

 Yes, it is

convenient

compared to

manual

checking

 Yes, because

we need to

keep text

originality

Not convincing

Yes

They admitted that Turnitin helped them to

detect the extent to which they have or have not

plagiarized. The participants were also willing to

continue to apply Turnitin following the Academic

Writing Class. Their text ownership was also

reflected in their attitude towards Turnitin that they

emphasized on the need to appreciate originality.

They also appreciated the convenience of Turtinin

compared to the time-taking manual originality

checking. A participant, though, claimed the

similarity check of Turnitin was not convincing in

regards to scrutinize the academic dishonesty.

Interestingly, he would use Turnitin in the future. He

further explained that he was reluctant of Turnitin due

to the lack of experience in using it, but he was willing

to use it because of his attitude against plagiarism.

It can be concluded that the Turnitin’s originality

report alarmed the participants about their potential

plagiarism. They deemed the Turnitin positively and

they would use the plagiarism detection tool

subsequently.

4.3 Turnitin and students’ writing

behavior

The questionnaire and interview disclosed that

Turnitin extended to have educational implication

(Ledwith and Rísquez, 2008; Youmans, 2011; Vie,

2013; Chew, Ding and Rowell, 2015). Table 2

presents the areas at which Turnitin impacted:

creativity, innovation, honesty and appreciation of

other works.

In regards to the pedagogy, the Turnitin’s

similarity report allowed the participants to reflect on

their writing and revise accordingly. They admitted

the instant copy-paste from digital sources provides

some conveniences but they claimed that the report

encouraged them to be creative and innovative with

the vocabularies or structures (Table 2). Therefore,

their writing skill grew as they revised their own

writing. Interestingly, participants (n=2) pointed out

that authors’ ability to paraphrase exhibit their

understanding of the subject matter and writing

ability. Thus, by applying the anti-plagiarism

technique, their writing skill is also enhanced (Chew,

Ding and Rowell, 2015). Lastly, the originality report

helped them identify the sources of plagiarism which

instilled the knowledge of plagiarism boundaries

(Youmans, 2011).

Similarly, the use of Turtinin intensified the

participants’ integrity in writing in academic context

(Walker, 2010). The participants, whose text

ownership is high, had greater responsibility and

appreciation towards others’ works and their own

works (Ledwith and Rísquez, 2008). They reflected

that writing is a difficult task which requires ideas,

skills, knowledge and efforts. Therefore, it is

important to recognize such difficult task.

Overall, Turnitin fosters the participants writing

skill and knowledge by encouraging them to be

creative with vocabularies and structures as well as

enhances their plagiarism knowledge by identifying

the plagiarism sources. Finally, Turnitin improves the

participants’ accountability as authors.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This study attempted to reveal 18 Indonesian master’s

degree scholarship awardees’ attitude towards

plagiarism and the application of a primary

plagiarism detection tool, Turnitin. This study also

The Contribution of Plagiarism Detection Tool to Students’ Academic Writing Behavior

143

explored the contribution of the tool to students’

academic writing behaviour. Nevertheless, this study

is not sponsored by the company and is not attributive

to the company. The application of Turnitin is limited

to the similarity report and conclusion is limited to the

context of the participants of this study. It was found

that the participants’ viewed plagiarism negatively

and their view is prompted by their strong text

ownership. In regards to Turnitin, the similarity report

raises their awareness of plagiarism boundaries and

extends their writing skill and knowledge. Turnitin

also instils the participants’ integrity as authors.

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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

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