Teaching English as a foreign language legally : avoiding plagiarism in literary analysis

Abstract EN

The current study sheds light on the importance of literary analysis in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in general and English Literature in particular.

Literary analysis is an opinion-based type of essay that makes a point about a work of literature usually a poem or short story.

Typically, a literary analysis makes a point about literature, and then supports that point by discussing the literary elements.

This process is usually considered by EFL students to be very hard.

Thus, they simply plagiarize.

Plagiarism is a very serious offense; it's an intellectual theft that may result in severe penalties.

The current work on avoiding plagiarism aims to solve this problem.

Its purpose is to assist students to identify and prevent such practices by following some guidelines.

We hypothesize that our sample will not plagiarize unless they paraphrase using other words or they acknowledge the original sources.

Later, we wonder if using Bloom's Taxonomy will solve the problem or not? The qualitative research method is adopted based basically on two questionnaires designed for five teachers of literature and 50 second-year LMD students at the Department of English - University of Laghouat.

The study took place during the second semester.

The findings proved our hypothesis and come up with using Bloom's Taxonomy as an effective tool in literary analysis; which can enhance learners' thinking abilities, and henceforth, we recommend teaching some guidelines about how to paraphrase, how to acknowledge others' works, and how to use Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking in literature classes to avoid Plagiarism.