Plagiarism : the weakest link in teaching research skills

Abstract EN

This paper examines a widespread phenomenon that has gained a universal dimension in a digital age where knowledge and data are growing more virtual and more accessible than ever: plagiarism or intellectual theft.

Using a questionnaire administered to a sample of students and a sample of teachers, it tries to analyse it in the context of the research projects carried out by LMD students and submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirements of a Master’s degree in applied language at the Department of Arts and English Language, University 1 of Constantine.

The hypothesis is that many students are not very aware of what plagiarism really includes mainly because they are seldom taught this appropriately in the teaching unit of research methods and skills.

Furthermore, a great number of students submitting their research work in the very short time allocated by the LMD Master curriculum (one semester), lack of supervisors (sometimes an average of seven candidates per supervisor) have made the problem even more complex, far out of control and practically unavoidable by a great number of them.

The responses of both teachers and students are quite inspiring in matter of what plagiarism fully implies, what its consequences in the short and long run are, how to detect it by supervisors in short term mass research projects and how to avoid it by students in order to behave ethically, abide by the laws governing intellectual property and, by the same token, promote original and creative thought.