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This study explores Chinese English-major students' intertextual competence and factors shaping their ability to paraphrase in academic writing. Multiple instruments were employed to collect data from 212 English-major students at different academic levels from nine universities in mainland China. The data were analyzed to determine how a range of personal and contextual variables related to their ability to paraphrase an academic text. Two groups of variables were found to be associated with their performance on the paraphrasing task. The first group comprised knowledge and attitudinal variables, including previous training on plagiarism, knowledge of blatant plagiarism, inability to recognize plagiarized texts, and condemnatory attitudes toward plagiarism. The second group consisted of ability measures or their proxy variables, namely English proficiency, instructional context and inadequate academic ability as a perceived cause of plagiarism. The observed relationship between the two groups of variables indicated that the effects of knowledge and attitudinal variables depended on or were mediated by the ability variables. These findings call for a multipronged and coordinated pedagogical approach to developing students' intertextual competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plagiarism is a major problem for universities worldwide and has been a constant cause of concern in higher education. Previous research has focused on Chinese students' attitudes toward, knowledge of, and engagement in plagiarism in Chinese and overseas educational contexts, and there is also a growing body of research on Chinese teachers' understandings of and stance on plagiaristic practices. However, little research attention has been given to institutional policies on plagiarism in the Chinese context, though similar research has been conducted in other settings. This paper reports on a study that examines the plagiarism policies made publicly available by eight major universities of foreign studies in mainland China. Both the structure and content of these universities' policy documents are analyzed to identify institutional understandings of, attitudes toward, and sanctions on plagiarism. The analysis reveals that despite inter-institutional variations, the policy documents are dominated by moralistic and regulatory discourses and are characterized by the conspicuous lack of an educative approach to plagiarism. We argue that such an institutional approach to plagiarism is unlikely to be effective because it largely fails to support students’ acquisition of academic literacy and legitimate intertextual practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Chinese university students' perceptions of plagiarism have been extensively investigated, those of their teachers have been surprisingly under-researched. This study sought to address this gap by investigating 112 Chinese university English teachers' knowledge of and attitudes towards plagiarism. While 57 participating teachers had overseas academic experience, the remaining ones received all their education in mainland China. They completed a perceptions of plagiarism survey that elicited their knowledge of several common forms of plagiarism in Anglo-American academia, perceptions of various possible causes of plagiarism, and attitudes towards plagiarism induced by different causes and plagiarism in general. The study found that the teachers reported varying knowledge of different types of transgressive textual practices, variegated perceptions of the different causes of plagiarism, but clearly punitive attitudes towards plagiarism. It also revealed significant differences between teachers with and without overseas academic experience in knowledge of and stances on plagiarism. These findings highlight the complexity of plagiarism as an intertextual phenomenon and point to the important role of cultural practices and academic socialisation in shaping perceptions of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and discussion on plagiarism have focused predominantly on ESOL students with little attention paid to ESOL teachers. This article reports a study of Chinese university English lecturers’ knowledge of and stance on two intertextual practices (i.e. unacknowledged copying and unattributed paraphrasing) regarded as plagiarism in Anglo-American academia, and, consequently, in the wider international academic community. Drawing on 117 Chinese university English lecturers’ ratings of three short English passages and open-ended justifications of their ratings, the study found that around two-thirds and two-fifths of them recognized unacknowledged copying and paraphrasing as plagiarism, respectively, and held clearly punitive attitudes towards detected plagiarism. It also revealed that while there was a broad consensus of opinion about unacknowledged copying, understandings of unattributed paraphrasing appeared divergent and ambivalent. These findings not only call into question essentialized views of plagiarism that stereotype cultures as either condoning or condemning plagiarism but also suggest a need to raise Chinese university English lecturers’ awareness about Anglo-American notions of plagiarism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on how higher institutions can better deal with the unacceptable intertextuality in the writings of Chinese students who are learning English as a second language. Topics discussed include the extensive research on plagiarism in ESL academic writing and the influx of Chinese students into higher education institutions in the West. The need for professors to instill academic integrity among students and the use of text-matching programs for detecting plagiarism are mentioned.