Plagiarism Plagiarism is a disturbing issue among academic societies not only in Malaysia but also across the world.

More and more students in the higher education levels are resorting to plagiarism to complete assignments, tasks and research papers. In fact, many websites are established to accommodate this need. Despite students having ample warnings, both written and verbal, the rates of plagiarism has increased rather than decreased. Plagiarism has been popularly defined as the practice of using other people ideas and works without permission or appropriating the sources and passing it as ones own works (Hu, 2001 and Myers, 1998 cited by American National Academy of Sciences.). The symptom of cut-and-paste culture seems to have spread rapidly among students, especially in cultures where copyright laws have been ignored. Why student resort to plagiarism? Studies on plagiarism have stated various factors for students to commit plagiarism. However, students lack of awareness and understanding about what constitutes plagiarism is said to be one main contributing factor for students to commit plagiarism (White, 1993; Rosnow and Rosnow, 1995 cited in Smith et al.; Love and Simmons, 1998). Students are not aware that copying and lifting information from the internet and other sources are considered cheating as students are ignorant of the plagiarism concept. According to study by Smith et al. (2007) on accounting students in a Malaysian university where students committed plagiarism because they do not understand what plagiarism is and they do not realize that it is wrong. Some students really believe that they are researching a topic if they copy information directly out of a book or a website; they do not always understand enough about citing sources to avoid plagiarism. Some students do not possess enough experience and skills to write research papers and are not prepared for the academic demands of universities. They think that as long as they provide a reference at the end of an assignment, theyve covered all the bases. Moreover, some students do not understand what constitutes common knowledge, which is information the majority of people already know, as compared to information that isnt common knowledge and, therefore, unknown to most people, in which case a source must be acknowledged. Students lack of time to complete the task or poor time management skills is also one of the factors. Students do not know how to manage time and unable to cope with the workload.

They are not aware of the extent of work and put it off until the last minute lacking time for original work. On the other hand, others do not trust their own capability and get insecure of the work of those professional ones. As they read the professionals work, they think that they lack knowledge to come up with as good as their work and all students aim for a high grade. They do not care whether they learn something from it as long as they get good grades. Some students are tempted to do so since other still get a grade or are not punish by doing so without any effort. The students did not even find time to analyze their topic since their professor did not require for a presentation of it. On the contrary, some studies shows that majority of students commit plagiarism is due to laziness. These students admitted that they have been thought the right way to do the assessment given but they just choose to ignore it. They see plagiarism as the smart way for time management as they have to juggle their time around their other commitments. How to prevent plagiarism among students? The tutor, lecturers or professionals must play the major role here by giving the assessment to the students that should focus more on local context, i.e. Malaysia. For example, issues about human trafficking, teaching English and Science back in Bahasa Melayu, Chinese and Tamil and so on. With this, students will have to use their knowledge to construct their arguments and to analyze them. Issues covering other countries or continents can be easily found in internet and students can simply cut and paste without spending quality efforts to construct their essays. Another alternative is to provide common topic(s) for the whole group. This will prevent them from copying from last terms essay from their seniors, searching and cutting-and-pasting information from the internet. It is also recommended that challenges need to be within students reach. If challenges are too easy, students will seek more difficult ones; if too difficult, they may abandon their efforts. As a student she or he should always become aware of the reasons of plagiarism that is poor planning. Students must plan they assessment to prevent them from plagiarizing. Meaning the student should know when to start discussing his/her own ideas and the student should also highlight what are his/her own ideas which are supported by the ideas borrowed from his/her source. Students must not just write ideas taken from other sources; it should be balance with their own ideas. More important is to know the proper forms of citation. It is advantageous to put the facts from other sources which will support the students own ideas to make it more valid.

The important thing is the students have to make sure they understand the topic of their assessment. Regardless of the seriousness of this academic violation, however, students have always resorted to plagiarism, mainly for the reasons stated but also for other less readily identifiable reasons, and students will continue to do so. After all, it can never be prevented entirely, but if students are educated regarding its possible grave repercussions, perhaps at less a few will make a valiant effort to avoid committing plagiarism, and, ultimately, they will be able to influence their peers. Sources:
1. Carroll, J. (2003). Six things I did not know four years ago about dealing with plagiarism.

Paper presented at the Asia-Pacific Educational Integrity Conference: Plagiarism and Other Perplexities. University of South Australia, Adelaide, 2122 November.
2. Hu, J. 2001. An Alternative perspective of Language Re-use: Insights from Textual and Learning Theories and L2 Academic Writing. English Quarterly. 33 (1), 52-62. 3. Smith, M., Ghazali, N. and Noor Minhad, S.F. (2007), "Attitudes towards plagiarism

among undergraduate accounting students: Malaysian evidence", Asian Review of Accounting,15(2): 122-146.
4. Yeo, S. (2007) First-year university science and engineering students understanding of

plagiarism. Higher Education Research & Development, 26: 199216.