50% Writing a Comparative Summary/synthesis

- Students are to write a comparative summary/synthesis (approximately

1000 words) of 2 articles on the same topic. The topic of the chosen articles
should be related to applied linguistics, TESOL or language teaching. The
specific requirements for this assignment are:
 The summary of the articles’ main contents must be included.
 The focus should be on the similarities and differences between the
author’s ideas in approaching the given matters in their articles.
 Reflective thoughts regarding the Vietnamese contexts in which students
are working as teachers, administrators etc. are expected.
 The original copies of the articles must be attached to the assignment.
 The in-text and end- of –text reference must be written in correct APA
style, i.e, the plagiarism policy will be strictly enforced.

 Due dates:
10 am Monday, 25/12/2017

Sample comparative summary/synthesis

“LIMITING PLAGIARISM IN EFL WRITING CLASSROOMS” AND

“YOUR OWN THOUGHTS IN YOUR OWN WORDS”:
A COMPARATIVE SYNTHESIS

Not until recently has the Western concept “plagiarism” become familiar to Asian
academic culture in general and Vietnamese academic culture in particular. What it
means by “plagiarism”, what causes plagiarism among EFL learners and how to limit
plagiarism in EFL writing classrooms are currently the questions of serious concern
among teachers of academic writing in different countries. In the two articles
“Limiting Plagiarism in EFL Writing Classrooms” by Darunee Dujsik in THAITESOL
BULLETIN Volume 15/2 August 2002 and “Your Own Thoughts in Your Own
Words” by Jane Sherman in ELT Journal Volume 46/2 April 1992, this matter is
interestingly investigated in Thailand and Italy respectively. The facts from these two
countries may, to great extent, be the case in Vietnam.

To start with, what is “plagiarism” and what are the symptoms of plagiarism?
According to Leonhard (1999, as cited in Dujsik (2002:?): “Plagiarism is a form of
cheating that involves borrowing or paraphrasing ideas from another person without
acknowledging the source.” Dujsik adds that there exist two types of plagiarists –
intentional and unintentional. Intentional plagiarists are those who duplicate other
students’ papers to make them their own. Unintentional plagiarists, whereas, write the
papers themselves but lack proper citation. Sherman (1992), on the other hand, notes
the concrete symptoms of her Italian students which include repeating without any
modification, rote-learning for exams, using others’ ideas without acknowledging and
lacking reasoning. Sadly, I must concede that all these symptoms can be found in
Vietnamese education. From my own teaching experience, I myself find that most of
my university students are unintentional plagiarists. They always answer the teacher’s
questions by picking up the exact words from the source, remember and recall
information in a test, and seldom or even never cite the source in a proper way.

What are the causes of plagiarism? Both Dujsik and Sherman claim that it is because
of the country’s academic culture, in which students are expected to learn by heart the
knowledge from text books. The more accurately a student can recall information, the
better (s)he is assessed to be. It is this attitude that leads to students’ restricted
consciousness of plagiarism. That is also the case in Vietnam where rote-learning is
comparatively popular. Dujsik goes on to assert that no emphasis on proper citation in
Thai papers is to be blamed. This lack of emphasis is rooted from Thai culture in
which copyright laws have commonly been violated. He further argues that students’
lack of skills in manipulating supporting information and lack of teacher monitoring
during the writing process are also the underlying reasons why students tend to
plagiarize. Alternatively, Sherman alleges that it is the students’ limited ability to
distinguish fact from opinion, and to develop argument that contributes to their failure
in citing information. She also emphasizes that her Italian students’ strong desire to
shine, to show their “bella figura” force them to borrow words and opinions. Among
these causes, some are true for my teaching environment. These encompass teachers’
lack of emphasis on proper citation, students’ lack of citation skills, and students’
inability to develop argument.

How can we solve this problem? Dujsik recommended four practical approaches. They
include setting up a serious penalty so that students will have to follow the right
procedure and obey the rules, raising students’ awareness of plagiarism by discussing
the issue in details, monitoring students’ writing process by assigning them to do the
writing task at various steps, and equipping students with citation skills by teaching
them to quote, paraphrase and summarize. The first approach may seem cruel but I
strongly support it because severe penalty raises students’ awareness of the importance
of proper citation which will in turn impulse students to cultivate their knowledge of
citation skills and practice them in their writing. Sherman, on the other hand, offered a
very interesting method – a cultural syllabus, in which “students will not have to
eradicate their own habits of thought and expression, but will be adding new patterns
to their intellectual repertoire and producing the kind of speech appropriate to the
immediate environment.” I myself believe that this will be the dominant tendency in
the near future because English is becoming ‘world’ English, not only British or
American English as before, and learning English does not mean abandoning
everything in one’s culture to follow everything in British and/or American culture.

To sum up, the issue of plagiarism is interestingly discussed in the two articles by
Darunee Dujsik and Jane Sherman. EFL students plagiarize in different ways varying
from unintentional type such as giving verbatim answer, rote-learning for exams,
borrowing others’ words and ideas without acknowledging the source, to intentionally
stealing others’ papers and treat them as their own. The causes for this phenomenon
also vary from country to country. Thai students plagiarize because they lack
awareness of the notion of plagiarism, lack citation skills and lack teacher monitoring
during the writing process, whereas Italian students do so because they fail to
distinguish fact from opinion, to develop argument or just because they want to
maintain their “bella figura”. The common point these two authors agree on is that
academic culture is the underlying cause. Useful recommendations for limiting
plagiarism are also suggested including setting up the penalty, raising students’
awareness, keeping track of students’ wring process, teaching them how to cite
properly, and especially making a cultural syllabus. Information from these articles is
really helpful for us, EFL teachers.