PERCEPTIONS OF EFL GRADUATE STUDENTS OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION TOWARDS PLAGIARISM

The aim of the current study was to investigate MA studentsʹ familiarity with the concept of plagiarism in English academic writing. For this purpose,20 MA students from the Faculty of Physical Education, University of Guilan, Iran participated in this study. Two questionnaires were used for data collection. The first instrument was a Likert-scale questionnaire dealing with studentsʹ general knowledge of plagiarism and attitudes toward it and the second questionnaire was an open-ended one.Through these items, the participants were asked about citation and referencing rules they use, and reasons for plagiarism and how it could be avoided it their view. The results of the study suggested that most of the participants were familiar with the concept of plagiarismbut their knowledge of referencing and citation rules was not adequate as they just referred to referencing at the end of their papers.Their main reasons for plagiarism commitment were identified as follows: Lack of enough instruction, lack of familiarity with plagiarism and laziness. As far as no clear explanation was given by most of the participating students for plagiarism prevention, it seems that further instruction is needed to familiarize students with writing rules.As the present study was limited to graduate students of one faculty only, it is suggested that students from various faculties and different programs be investigated in future studies to see if they differ from each other in terms of their perceptions of plagiarism.