Statement of Research

Entisar Elsherif, Libya

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

The main purpose of this statement of research is to provide a summary of my intended research study. This summary will include some reasons behind taking academic writing and plagiarism as an area of study and brief details of the study components that include research questions and data collection instruments.

My previous paper, “An Investigation into Libyan Postgraduates’ Academic Writing Difficulties and their Views on Tutors’Written Feedback”, investigated academic writing difficulties encountered by Libyan postgraduates studying at UK universities and their views on their tutors’ written feedback. Data indicated that one of the problems Libyan postgraduates faced while writing academic English was in avoiding plagiarism which provided the groundwork for this research proposal. Three other incidents attracted my attention, which happened while I was teaching at the Faculty of Education, and made me decide to investigate this problem as a follow up. The first one was when a student submitted an essay that had a ring of a borrowed and repeated language. When I checked a part of her text on Google, the shocking result was that she copied her text from one of the writing websites. The other two incidents were during my work with Libyan undergraduates in the same faculty. Working as an academic supervisor/tutor for their graduation projects, I confronted their borrowed and copied written work. It was noticeable that many students did not know what is meant by using their own voice while borrowing others’ work. As a result, most of their written work was copied, and therefore, plagiarized. Apparently, those students neither understood what plagiarism is, nor the technical skills that should be used to reform their borrowed texts. On the contrary, not all the misuse of the borrowed text was intentional. Some students applied their citations successfully but had problems with summarizing and paraphrasing which made their written work seem to be plagiarized. Finally, research on academic writing in the Libyan context is really scarce and concerns with plagiarism are almost non-existent. For that reason, I aim to probe and explore Libyan English major undergraduates’ perceptions and practices towards plagiarism while writing in English as a foreign language for academic purposes to fill in this gap. To take this study further, I intend to investigate tutors’ feedback effectiveness in helping students being accused as plagiarists.

Thus, the main objective of this research is to study Libyan English major undergraduates’ perceptions, interpretations and practices towards plagiarism while writing in English as a second/foreign language for academic purposes in the three faculties of Education, Tripoli, Janzour and Bin Gisher, at Alfateh University in Libya. The study also aims to examine tutors’ feedback efficiency in helping those students to avoid copying others’ work without appropriate acknowledgement.

Three overarching questions are raised to achieve this research’s aims and objectives. These are: First, What are L2 students’ perceptions and practices of academic writing and plagiarism?, Second, How does their perceptions and practices change after a course that teaches them academic writing and avoiding plagiarism techniques?, and Third, How can tutors’ written feedback help students improve their academic writing and avoid plagiarism?

Data will be collected through writing samples, tests, and questionnaires. The written samples will include students’written work and tutors’ written feedback. Tests related to academic integrity and plagiarism policies will examine students’ understandings and practices. Questionnaires will be distributed to students as well as their tutors. The main goals of the students’ writing samples analysis is to check the differences between students’ written text and the published texts they used and how students applied the technical skills of using others’ work to support their ideas such as paraphrasing and summarizing. On the other hand, tutors’ feedback samples analysis will provide the type of feedback and language tutors use to provide their students with as well as its usefulness in helping students to avoid being accused as plagiarists. Questionnaires, however, will provide data related to students’ and tutors’ perceptions towards academic writing and plagiarism.

As mentioned earlier, the subjects of the study will be Libyan undergraduates studying at English departments at the three Faculties of Education at Alfateh University. Tutors from the same faculties will be included, as well.

To conclude, I would like to indicate that this proposal is a preliminary draft. According to my previous experience, there might be some changes after finishing the reading through literature stage which happened in my previous research proposal. What makes this research idea interesting is that I myself am considered as a second language writer of academic English. I will learn from this research more about plagiarism and improve my academic literacy and discourse knowledge and practice in the same time. This research will also help me while I am teaching Libyan students’academic writing and avoiding plagiarism. I hope that the challenge of this research will be as interesting, exciting, and rewarding as the one I did during my MA study.