Unveiling Plagiarism Practices in Iranian English Language Students’ Theses

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 M.A. Student in Applied Linguistics, Department of English Language, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran

2 Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics, Department of English Language, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran

3 Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, Department of English Language, University of Birjand, Birjand, Iran

Abstract

The present study sought to investigate the prevalence of plagiarism in graduate theses submitted by Iranian students. To this end, a corpus comprising 43 Master's theses in Trans-lation Studies and 46 Master's theses in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) was analyzed utilizing the iThenticate plagiarism detection software. The content of the the-ses was scrutinized to identify instances of plagiarism, defined as the verbatim reproduction or paraphrasing of passages from published sources without proper citation. The findings revealed several cases where students had paraphrased entire excerpts from books or journal articles without providing adequate citations. Furthermore, the data showed a higher inci-dence of plagiarism in Translation Studies theses relative to TEFL theses, with Chapter 2 exhibiting the most pronounced discrepancies. Although the degree of overlap between source texts and student work was substantially greater in TEFL theses, the extent of plagia-rism, as defined by the verbatim reproduction of copyrighted material, was more prevalent in Translation Studies theses. A chi-square test corroborated the presence of a statistically significant difference between the frequencies of plagiarism in the two disciplines under examination.

Keywords

References

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Applied Linguistics Inquiry
Volume 2, Issue 1
March 2024
Pages 104-113

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History

  • Receive Date: 25 October 2023
  • Revise Date: 17 November 2023
  • Accept Date: 26 January 2024

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