Academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, is an ongoing problem in higher education (Henderson & Whitelaw, 2013), and the ease with which academic dishonesty could be done in this digital era seems to aggravate the situation (Stapleton, 2005; Thomas & Sassi, 2011; Warschauer, 2007). In addition, as Pecorari (2003) put it, although "no evidence exists that NNSEs (non-native speakers of English) plagiarize more than their NES (native English speakers) counterparts, it has sometimes been asserted that they do" (p.321). As a result, this is another important topic emerging from the exploration of international Chinese students' development of multiliteracies and thus relevant to the current study.
Research shows that there is no one simple and straight- forward answer to this
phenomenon. While language proficiency level is often relevant in the discussion (Hewlett, 1996), culturally specific beliefs, social conventions, and everyday-practices Chinese students have been accustomed to are also considered as important factors. Kern (2015) pointed out that, "how we acknowledge that borrowing in different contexts" (p.197) is key to the discussion of plagiarism. Research demonstrates that, if students come from an education system concentrating on knowledge accumulation, they may not find many important concepts and distinctions familiar, such as notions of authorship and attribution, ownership of ideas and texts, and critical thinking, as well as differences between their own ideas and those of others, and between what is common knowledge and what are borrowed
ideas (Carroll & Oxford Centre for Staff Development, 2002; Ercegovac & Richardson, 2004; Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2005; Sutherland-Smith, 2005; Zhuang, 2009).
For instance, in Shi's (2004) study of how first language and the type of writing task affect undergraduates’ word usage from source readings in their English writing, Chinese students were found using source texts mostly without citing references. Different
understandings of critical analysis and plagiarism were also found in Holmes' (2004) report of an 18-month ethnographic study of thirteen ethnic Chinese students in a New Zealand university.
Rinnert and Kobayashi (2005) looked at Japanese students' perception towards borrowing words and ideas without citing the source and found that students did not regard such a behavior as entirely negative. The researchers attributed such a finding to several factors such as a lack of writing and researching experience in high school, traditional Japanese educational practice and the concept of learning. And the situation described in this study is applicable to a large extent to Chinese students in regards to their traditional educational practice and beliefs.
Efforts were taken to further the exploration of Chinese students' knowledge of plagiarism through their educational experiences in China. Peters and Frankoff (2014)
conducted a survey-driven study on college students' digital scrapbooking strategies and their knowledge of plagiarism. The research subjects are a group of third-year business English
program students at a Chinese University. Results indicated that students frequently used the internet to look for information to write their school assignments. In addition, while students in this study were frequently warned against plagiarism, the teachers often assumed that students already know how to avoid plagiarizing and do not need much help with its
prevention. A similar situation may apply to international Chinese students who are studying in a foreign environment (Zhao & Mawhinney, 2015). Peters and Frankoff (2014) argued that "rather than lament the fact that many of our students are copying and pasting information in their writing assignments, we need to be proactive and tap into these new digital skills that students have acquired" (p.259).
The belief in proactive teaching instead of post facto punishment resonates with the one held by Pecorari (2003) in his study of the writing of 17 postgraduate students (international students and NNSEs). Pecorari found that, while students' writing was found to contain textual features which could be described as plagiarism, based on students' accounts of their work and the textual analysis results, they did not seem to have the intention to transgress academic conventions. Such a finding echoes with similar suggestions in the literature (Angelil-Carter, 2000).
Research on this topic suggests pedagogical implications and sheds new light on the design of academic support resources for students. For example, Thomas and Sassi (2011) proposed a model called Plagiarism 2.0 to help instructors to understand and deal with the
issue of academic dishonesty. Based on the insights drawn from the literature and results of their pilot study, Henderson and Whitelaw (2013) developed a series of accessible and meaningful e-learning resources for international Chinese students in Australian colleges to improve their understanding of and skills associated with academic literacy and assist them in settling into their studies in the foreign environment. These set of resources received highly positive feedback from both students and instructors.
Again, as McClure and Purdy (2013) pointed out that the contemporary claims of
plagiarism are often anecdotal and over-generalized, and attention should be directed towards students' research practices, more research is needed to verify these assumptions. And the current study intended to contribute to the literature on this issue based on solid data of the case study subjects' moment-by-moment authoring process.