Students Strategies and Patterns of Plagiarism: Academic Writing in the Internet Age

This study shows the finding of an action research entitled Integrity and Academic Excellence: Combating Plagiarism in Academic Writing. The major concern of this study is to formulate patterns of plagiarism by focusing on students use of internet materials as a source of references in their writing. This study seeks to identify some patterns and strategies of plagiarism employed by international students taking academic writing class in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia. The subjects were asked to write on a topic the importance of the Internet in education. The 15 texts written by 15 international students at the postgraduate levels are textually analyzed and patterns of plagiarism are deduced from their written assignment. The study finds 3 main patterns of plagiarism; they are patchwriting, borrowing and cut and paste. The patterns are reflect the students level of language fluency as well as confidence in using English in their writings.