Reasons for College Students to Plagiarize in EFL Writing: Students’ Motivation to Pass

Abstract

<p class="apa">EFL students acquire their writing skill through practice and hard work. However, there seems to be a lot of reasons why EFL students should find the task of composing an essay so difficult that leads them to plagiarize. For that, the present paper tries to find out the real motivation for EFL students to plagiarize in writing. This research was conducted with freshman writing students through Fall Semester 2015/2016 in the English Department. A simple questionnaire and journal writing was used. The results shows that mainly the participants plagiarize in writing just to get good grades and pass the course. Moreover, their main source for plagiarizing is the internet. However, through the journal writing practice, the policy of free choice of topics evoked divided reactions from students.</p>