213

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180

Two first-year students’ strategies for writing from sources:

Patchwriting or plagiarism?

Yongyan Li *, Christine Pearson Casanave

University of Hong Kong and Temple University, Japan Campus, Japan

Abstract

In this paper we report a case study of two first-year students at a university in Hong Kong doing the same writing assignment that

required the use of sources. We explore the students’ understanding of plagiarism, their strategies for composing, the similarity

between their texts and source texts, and the lecturer’s assessment of their work. The analyses in the study drew upon textual

comparisons between student texts and source texts, interview data, and observation notes. The data indicated that both students

appeared to understand the university’s plagiarism policy yet their texts were characterized by patchwriting and inappropriate

citation. Only one student’s problems were spotted by the lecturer and checked with Turnitin while the other’s was hidden to the

lecturer. We speculate about the reasons, and then discuss these issues related to students’ writing from sources: the place of reading

in a source-based assignment, the difficulty level of sources for an assignment in an introductory course, complexities of attribution

in source-based writing assignments, and the place of patchwriting in the work of novice writers. We conclude by highlighting the

challenges faced by teachers and researchers and echo with others that different labels need to be given to plagiarism as cheating

versus misuse of source texts.

# 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: University plagiarism regulations; Patchwriting; Undergraduate use of sources; Chinese EFL students; Instructor awareness of misuse

of sources

Introduction

It may take a bit of effort for experienced teachers and researchers to imagine (or recall) what it is like for a first-

year university student who needs to write papers from sources to be faced with plagiarism policies such as the

following:

(1) D

* C

E

1060

doi:

efinition of plagiarism

In brief, plagiarism is passing off someone else’s work or ideas as your own to gain some benefit. For students,

‘benefit’ may mean trying to get a better grade or mark, or meeting a deadline so marks are not lost. Whether you

plagiarise deliberately or accidentally, it is unacceptable (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2008, p. 2).

(2) ‘‘

Zero tolerance’’ on plagiarism

The Chinese University of Hong Kong places very high importance on honesty in academic work submitted by

students, and adopts a policy of zero tolerance on cheating in examinations and plagiarism. Any related offence

orresponding author.

-mail addresses: [email protected] (Y. Li), [email protected] (C.P. Casanave).

-3743/$ – see front matter # 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

10.1016/j.jslw.2012.03.002

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180166

will lead to disciplinary action including termination of studies at the University (The Chinese University of Hong

Kong, 2005, http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/index.htm).

Any student who reads such policies carefully and who is lectured by well-meaning instructors about the dangers of

plagiarism would be justified in developing writers’ block out of a sense of terror. Plagiarism policies in educational

settings and reports in the media of the ‘‘epidemic’’ of plagiarism do not help dispel this view: They tend to focus on

detection and punishment rather than learning, and not to distinguish intentional from unintentional plagiarism (Adler-

Kassner, Anson, & Howard, 2008; Price, 2002; Zwagerman, 2008). The punishment can be severe, as Extract 2 above

attests.

Well-known precautions against plagiarism offered by writing teachers and writing textbooks suggest that students

learn the technical skills of paraphrasing and of citation to represent and document sources. However, doing so

skillfully requires that writers learn to participate in the literate activities of their academic communities (Casanave,

2008; Prior, 1998), not just focus on the technical aspects of a product that will be graded. Participating in meaningful

ways requires that writers know something about their subject matter and ways of thinking about and discussing it,

about larger rhetorical issues in writing, and about many often obscure and invisible details of citation conventions that

differ from discipline to discipline (Pecorari, 2006). First-year undergraduates, new to many of the subjects they study,

do not understand participation in this way. Spurred on by well-meaning teachers, they see their job as the need to

finish assignments quickly on topics they may know little about, turn their papers in, and get a grade (what Prior (1998)

called ‘‘passing’’ and ‘‘procedural’’ participation as opposed to ‘‘deep participation’’).

A coping strategy commonly used by novice writers who are unfamiliar with the subject matter they write on is

patchwriting, which has been characterized as ‘‘copying from a source text and then deleting some words, altering

grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym substitutes’’ (Howard, 1993, p. 233). In a later likewise

well-cited article, Howard (1995) continued to separate patchwriting from prototypical (intentionally deceptive)

plagiarism. We can summarize her views about patchwriting as follows: It is often found in the texts of learners who

are unfamiliar with the language and content of their topic; it indicates the learners’ effort to try to employ the target

discourse; it is not acceptable in the final draft of a paper submitted for assessment; and therefore learners should, with

the help of their instructors, aim to go beyond patchwriting for their final drafts. Howard concluded this article with a

detailed policy statement for universities that is institution-specific and that acknowledges the complex and contested

nature of what usually falls under the single pejorative category of plagiarism (pp. 798–803).

Since Howard’s two 1990s articles, numerous studies have echoed the spirit of what Howard had said about

patchwriting in contrast with prototypical plagiarism, while revealing that patchwriting bears upon a range of other

issues such as English proficiency, personal identity, power relations among discourses and people, and cultural

baggage (e.g., Chandrasoma, Thompson, & Pennycook, 2004; Pecorari, 2003; Shi, 2004; Starfield, 2002). However,

institutional policies of plagiarism remain unshaken in their discourse of ‘‘the law and authority’’ (Lea & Street, 1998,

p. 168), as is indicated by the state-of-the-art policies quoted at the beginning of this paper from the ethical codes at

two universities in Hong Kong. In other words, Howard’s (1995) ‘‘proposed policy on plagiarism’’ has in general not

found a home in the institutional documents, which continue to look both simple and threatening, at least to first-year

students.

The affordances of the Internet have made various textual borrowing strategies all the more straightforward and

sensible for the new generation of techno-savvy students, when unlimited academic sources (e.g., journal articles and

Google books) as well as unconventional and interactive sources (e.g., blogs, Wikipedia, news sites, Web 2.0) (Purdy,

2010; Radia & Stapleton, 2009) are all easily accessible through generic search engines or university-based academic

database searches. Nevertheless, being techno-savvy without being information-savvy (Brown, Murphy, & Nanny,

2003) is likely to aggravate inappropriate textual borrowing associated with electronic sources. Early year

undergraduates and other inexperienced writers in particular may find it difficult to evaluate and select information

according to the perceived demand of a course assignment (Brown et al., 2003; McDowell, 2002) or to know what to

cite and what might be considered ‘‘common knowledge’’ whatever the source might be (Shi, 2010, 2011). Master’s

level students as well might not know how to use electronic databases efficiently and appropriately, as Stapleton’s

(2010) case study in Hong Kong showed of a recently graduated master’s student writing a 4000-word research-task

essay: The student ‘‘claimed to be focusing on the content, without paying attention to the source of information’’ (p.

301). She not only relied on Wikipedia, a temptingly easy source, but also sometimes casually accepted ‘‘a dubious

source’’ from her electronic searches (p. 304).

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180 167

Not only has the Internet made textual borrowing strategies easier; it has also made detection of copied material

easier. One of the most widely used detection systems is Turnitin, a for-profit system for detecting copied passages

and, more recently, for providing certain kinds of feedback (Turnitin.com). Plagiarism detection software such as

Turnitin uses algorithms to identify and compare sequences of characters in a submitted text to databases of stored files

of other texts, such as archived papers submitted previously and billions of web pages (Introna & Hayes, 2008;

Turnitin.com). Settings can be adjusted for a customized search so that, for example, quoted material is excluded from

the report. With Turnitin, overlaps between a submitted text and an archived text are color-coded according to the

extent of overlap, and an ‘‘originality report’’ with a percentage and numerical score is generated. As Introna and

Hayes (2008) and others – including the Turnitin website – have pointed out, Turnitin does not identify plagiarism, nor

does it identify intention to cheat. It only identifies copied sequences and their sources, which may or may not have

been used by the author appropriately. Instructors therefore need to check carefully any suspicious papers to see

whether source materials have been used properly (Turnitin.com).

How have individual students and instructors reacted to these changes in how academic writing gets done and

evaluated? Previous research has reported on students’ beliefs and practices concerning plagiarism as revealed

through questionnaires (e.g., Selwyn, 2008), interviews (e.g., Shi, 2010), or case studies (e.g., Pecorari, 2006). It has

also presented evidence of individual students’ patchwriting (e.g., Chandrasoma et al., 2004) and examined

instructors’ attitudes and reactions toward students’ textual borrowing (e.g., Li, 2012a, 2012b) as well as toward the

use of Turnitin (e.g., Emerson, 2008). Nevertheless, holistic pictures concerning individual students are still largely

lacking. Such holistic investigations potentially could illuminate what this contested and sensitive issue labeled

‘‘plagiarism’’ by university policies means to a novice writer situated in a particular context, how his/her textual

strategies in a specific writing assignment resonate with the meaning of plagiarism to him/her, and how such

strategies may be perceived by the instructor concerned when Turnitin is used as part of the assessment process. In the

present paper we aim to address this need for research, by documenting the experiences of two first-year ESL

university students in Hong Kong as they wrote a short assignment in an introductory linguistics course. Like

Stapleton’s (2010) study, our study was based in a higher-learning institution in Hong Kong and also adopted a case

study approach to characterize the process dimension of writing from sources, including mainly Internet sources. Our

study differs from Stapleton’s in several ways. First, it examines how two first-year students, rather than a master’s

student, used and cited sources for one short assignment actually assigned as part of their classwork, not as a research

task. Second, it looks at the ways that their instructor responded to each of them differently, including by using, or

choosing not to use, the university’s Turnitin technology. Third, it does not use process logs or coded data, but textual

analysis (student texts and source texts) and interviews. Our study differs from another relevant and important study,

Shi’s (2010, 2011) single-shot interview study of large numbers of undergraduates and instructors about citation

decision processes. Instead, we recorded multiple conversations with just two students and the instructor. Our

perspective, therefore, is very local and very particular, with all the advantages and disadvantages of an approach that

is situated in a particular context (Cicourel, 2007; Lave & Wenger, 1991). These conversations were not coded,

quantified, or analyzed statistically. Rather, we examined over multiple interviews and text analyses how students

understood their university plagiarism policy, and then how they used source materials to write one short assignment.

We highlight the textual evidence of sources and of overlap of students’ writing with those sources as a major part of

this study. We are particularly interested in these questions:

(1) H

ow do the students understand ‘‘plagiarism’’ at their university?

(2) W

hat strategies do they use as they write an assignment that requires sources?

(3) W

hat are the textual results of their strategies and the instructor’s response to each text?

Our responses to these questions will lead us to ponder upon the connections between textual borrowing and the

kinds and practices of reading that instructors demand in their writing assignments, in particular in terms of the role

and difficulty level of readings in a source-based assignment in an introductory course. At the same time, our study

adds to the existing literature by shedding further light on the complexities of attribution in writing from sources as

well as the value of patchwriting in novice writers’ learning processes. In addition to generating pedagogical

implications and encouraging teachers and institutions to reject the label ‘‘plagiarist’’ to describe patchwriting-reliant

novice writers such as the two student participants in the present study, these insights also reinforce Howard’s (1995)

call to change university plagiarism policies.

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180168

The research context

The setting for our study is a university in Hong Kong. In the early 1990s, Deckert (1993) identified a gap between

‘‘the ethical ideals in the ‘Standards of Conduct’ in Hong Kong college catalogs’’ and the students’ ‘‘past training and

current understanding’’ (p. 142). Although Deckert’s study was criticized by Pennycook (1994) for its ethnocentrism,

even in the present day, the teaching of citational skills such as paraphrasing or source attribution is not visibly part of

the English or subject matter curricula in local schools (see e.g., Curriculum Development Council and the Hong Kong

Examinations and Assessment Authority, 2007). Students are thus not sufficiently prepared in high school to

understand and avoid plagiarism in university writing. In addition, increasing numbers of students from mainland

China have been entering Hong Kong universities in recent years (Sin, 2009). These students from the mainland are no

better prepared than their fellow students who are fresh from the regular local schools in Hong Kong to write from

sources and attribute their sources adequately.

In spite of students’ lack of preparation, universities in Hong Kong have committed to strict published policies on

plagiarism. In addition to published policies, at the university where the present study was conducted, a research-

intensive English-medium university in Hong Kong (referred to as HU in this paper), instructors have been encouraged

to use the plagiarism detection software Turnitin (Turnitin.com, described briefly above) for a number of years, as at a

few other universities in Hong Kong.

The participants and the writing task

In this paper we focus on two first-year students and one instructor. All participants signed consent forms. The

instructor, Mark (pseudonym), our initial contact in this study, was an English-L1 expatriate from the UK, had taught

full-time at HU for more than five years, but had lived in Hong Kong for about ten years and could speak fluent

Cantonese. He did not apply Turnitin to all students’ work by default; he only ran a student text through Turnitin if the

text raised his suspicion in the process of grading it (so the students were always required to submit their assignments

in both hard and soft copies). When requested to recommend a student to participate in our study, Mark recommended

Iris (pseudonym) – apparently due to Iris’s problem of ‘‘textual borrowing’’ in a previous assignment (a term we used

during our contact with Mark and a term that he then adopted to describe Iris’s case when recommending her to us in an

email).

Iris, an L1 speaker of Cantonese, was in the second semester of the first year at the time of the study, as was our other

participant, Yumin (pseudonym), who was an L1 speaker of Mandarin Chinese. Yumin was introduced to the first

author (Yongyan) by a colleague who was also teaching Yumin at the time. Both students were enrolled in an

introductory linguistics course co-taught by Mark and two colleagues. Both students were in Mark’s tutorial group and

thus had their assignments assessed by him. Iris had attended a CMI (Chinese as the Medium of Instruction) high

school in Hong Kong. Yumin was in a cohort of outstanding students enrolled by HU upon their graduation from high

schools in Mainland China. In line with the enrollment scheme for this cohort, Yumin had spent one year at an HU-

designated university in Mainland China before joining the HU as a Year 1 student. He took TOEFL while at the

mainland university, attaining a score of 107 (out of a total possible of 120), and a writing score of 22 (out of 30). Iris,

by contrast, in the advanced level examinations based on which students like her gain entry to universities, got a B in

English (also a B in the English writing part), which was ‘‘really satisfactory’’ as she herself put it, because previously

very few students in her high school had attained B. At the time of the study, both Iris and Yumin had taken an EAP

(English for Academic Purposes) course in the previous semester that covered such topics as searching for

information, evaluating Internet sources, critical reading, and citation styles.

Neither Yongyan (an instructor in a different Faculty from the two students’) nor her research assistant (RA) (a part-

time PhD student in Yongyan’s Faculty) knew the students before this project began and were not, and would not be in

the future, their instructors. Still, both were part of the university community and did not represent themselves as

neutral observers. The second author, Christine, a Caucasian L1 English user and former professor at a Japanese

university, resided outside Hong Kong and participated after all data were collected.

The assignment that was the focus in this study was the final assignment of four in the introductory linguistics

course as mentioned above. Whereas previous assignments in the same course mostly required analyses of linguistic

data, this final assignment was a source-based essay (within a word limit of 500–700 words) that asked students to do

the following: ‘‘Describe three pieces of evidence for the view that the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180 169

language.’’ Other than this, no instruction was provided as to what kinds of or how many sources the students should

use in completing the assignment. Thus the assumption was that students should know how to proceed to find the right

sources for the assignment. Given that Mark would be likely to check a student paper with Turnitin when in doubt

about how students used sources (see our findings below), it was clear that the students were also expected to cite their

sources properly. This was thus a scenario suited to answering the research questions posed in the present study.

Data collection and analysis

The majority of the data for this study were collected by Yongyan, with the assistance of the RA, over

approximately a one-month period at the end of an academic year. The students provided their texts and most of the

source texts they used. Six interviews were conducted and recorded with Iris and five with Yumin, with each ranging

from anywhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour. The last three interviews dealt specifically with the linguistics

assignment that is the focus of this study. The earlier interviews asked students about other academic assignments that

they had done earlier in the semester, including their citation practices. The interviews took place in various locations,

such as a study room for the students, a common room in a faculty building, and Yongyan’s office. Two of the

interviews with Iris were conducted in Cantonese (by the RA, who shared Cantonese as the mother tongue with Iris);

and two of the interviews with Yumin were conducted in Mandarin Chinese (by Yongyan, who shared the mother

tongue with Yumin) and one in Cantonese (by the RA, at the request of Yumin, who wanted to practice his Cantonese).

The English-speaking interviews were mostly conducted by Yongyan and the RA together with the student concerned

(see Casanave (2010) for a discussion of the issues in interview research when mother tongues are not shared). The

interviews involving the linguistics assignment were predominantly text-based, where the interviewer(s) based

questions and comments on the students’ texts and sometimes source texts. At appropriate points, they asked questions

that explored the students’ understanding of plagiarism (including inviting a definition of plagiarism) and questions

that were derived from analyzing textual data. Although a few guiding questions were prepared for each of the

interviews, these interviews were intended to reveal the students’ own perspectives on their textual strategies for

searching for and using source material, while proceeding carefully on the sensitive topic of plagiarism. Two of the

interviews with Iris (conducted by the RA) also included short segments of observation of and discussion with Iris as

she worked at the computer. Soon after Mark had given grades to both students, two interviews with him were

conducted in English by Yongyan, to elicit his views on the two students’ work. All interviews were summarized,

selectively transcribed, and where needed translated into English by Yongyan.

The main sources of data consisted of student texts and source texts, the interview data, the RA’s observation notes,

Yongyan’s research memos (Maxwell, 2005), as well as the case profiles (Strauss, 1987) she separately constructed for

each student prior to the drafting of the present paper. Data analysis in light of the research questions involved reading

student texts against source texts, examining interview and observation data for evidence of students’ decisions about

how they found and cited sources and of the instructor’s responses to the essays, and referring to research memos and

case profiles, which provided background and context. The two authors collaboratively discussed patterns of meaning

in the data set by interpreting the students’ understanding of plagiarism, charting their source-searching pathways and

textual strategies of writing from sources, and representing the instructor’s contrastive perspectives on the two student

papers. We turn now to the experiences of the two students and their instructor.

Findings

The two students’ essays both followed a five-paragraph scheme: an introduction, followed by three paragraphs

(each of which was aimed to provide a piece of evidence that supports the view that the left hemisphere of the brain is

responsible for the language ability), and finally, a brief wind-up. We start with the students’ grades and the instructor’s

comments on the completed assignments. We then go back and trace Iris’s and Yumin’s understanding of plagiarism,

followed by their textual strategies, the textual results, and the instructor’s responses.

Beginning at the end

Iris received a C on her essay. Apart from underlining problematic expressions and making corrections of grammar

and wording in the text and putting numerous questions in the margin (mostly asking ‘‘source?’’), in his summative

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180170

comment written on Iris’s paper, Mark described it as ‘‘quite a mixed up and confused/confusing essay’’ and noted that

‘‘acknowledgement is inconsistent.’’ Mark suspected Iris of plagiarizing, and was prompted to check her essay with

Turnitin, at which point he found approximately 25% overlap with her sources. In contrast, Yumin got an A from Mark

on his paper. According to Mark, Yumin’s work was thorough and the sources in his text were well ‘‘integrated.’’ Mark

did not feel it necessary to check Yumin’s essay with Turnitin; however, Mark was concerned when Yongyan at a post-

grading interview brought his attention to the strings and segments in Yumin’s paper that overlapped with the sources.

As we shall see below, both students were highly strategic in their use of source material, but in very different ways.

Although both were also able to recite the basic tenets of the university’s plagiarism policy, both also borrowed and

cited sources inappropriately, in view of the policy.

The students’ understanding of plagiarism

Both Iris and Yumin could recite the basic policy of plagiarism and recognize that plagiarism was an unacceptable

practice in university writing assignments. They both claimed they had no intention to plagiarize. When asked about

her understanding of plagiarism in an interview, Iris presented a standard definition, as shown below:

(3) P

lagiarism – is that a student copy some opinion or some original thought when it is not think by him- or herself

without proper citation. (Interview in English, April 22, 2010)

In the same interview, when asked whether she found plagiarism an issue for students like her, she expressed her

frustration of never intending to plagiarize, but often did not ‘‘know the proper way of dealing with it’’:

(4) W

e as a student we all have to write essay, but we, I don’t think as a student we have the ability to create own

thought or create theory [. . .], so we always have to consult resources, right? In the way of consulting, in the way of selecting the data, we do not know, at least I myself do not know the proper way of how to quote it. So I might put

myself at risk in plagiarism. But I do not intend to copy thought really, I always want to use my own words to

interpret and express it, but maybe the situation is not allowed it, or I just don’t know the proper way of dealing

with it. (Interview in English, April 22, 2010)

When saying the above, Iris raised her voice, appearing emotional. She may have had in mind her experience of

being called into Mark’s office for her ‘‘plagiarism’’ on a previous assignment. Fear of being accused of plagiarism

was thus an issue that created anxiety for her (Abasi & Graves, 2008): She never intended to ‘‘copy thought’’ but she

was not sure how to ‘‘present [her] own argument’’ and still use sources appropriately.

Yumin pointed out that he realized for the first time how serious plagiarism was in academic writing when he got a

pamphlet on What is plagiarism on his first day of registration at HU. In interviews Yumin indicated he too understood

the basic definition and recognized the value of citations in academic papers:

(5) I

t is OK use others’ opinion and sometimes it’s necessary but you must give reference. It takes time but first it can

avoid plagiarism, and it can make your essay more professional. (Interview in English, April 23, 2010)

In the same interview, Yumin affirmed, ‘‘the more references you use, the more you’re convincing professor you’re

making effort to look for information, and that’s good’’ but that using ‘‘another’s opinion without reference’’ is

plagiarism.

In a later interview, Yumin also demonstrated an awareness of both intentional and unintentional cases, and pointed

out that translating something from Chinese without acknowledging or using one’s own previous work (as a new

submission) without the lecturer’s permission was also plagiarism. Meanwhile, he indicated he understood the severe

consequences of plagiarism:

(6) I

won’t copy, too dangerous, because at HU if you plagiarize and got caught, it’s no ordinary matter, you’re faced

with no degree, can’t graduate. If you write your own work, bad grade is better than getting disciplined; if you get a

disciplinary punishment at such a (well-known) university, you’d probably lose your credibility for the rest of your

life. (Interview in Mandarin Chinese, May 14, 2010)

In sum, both Iris and Yumin appeared to understand the university’s plagiarism policy in that they were able to

reiterate its basic tenets, although Yumin’s knowledge appeared to be more detailed than Iris’s. We will see next how

they used sources in ways that they apparently believed fit within the university plagiarism policy. In other words, they

had no intention to commit ‘‘plagiarism’’ as they understood it.

The students’ strategies in writing the linguistics assignment, the textual results, and the instructor’s responses

Although following different routes of source searching, both students in effect wrote the linguistics assignment

from a very limited number of source texts, and both relied on patchwriting. Below we take a close look at their source

searching and patchwriting strategies, and integrate this portrayal with the instructor’s different reactions toward the

two student texts.

Iris: Fast and efficient but uncritical searching and selecting. Iris’s paper was 595 words. She completed the

assignment in about two hours, and in effect drew upon three sources: a PowerPoint lecture slide for the first piece of

evidence and two articles for the other two pieces of evidence, to support the view that the left hemisphere of the

human brain is responsible for the language function. She made no attribution for the first piece of evidence she gave

(on aphasia), and tried to cite the other two sources, in just two within-parentheses citations that were nevertheless

erroneously done. The following observation notes made by the RA recorded Iris’s strategic and trouble-saving way of

searching for sources at the computer, a process that led to her decision about the two sources just mentioned:

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180 171

(7) I

ris did the keyword search on the HU Electronic Resources using the keywords ‘‘left hemisphere + language’’

from her assignment sheet. From the generated results, she found two articles (among the first few in the list and

full text in PDF available) that she thought had high relevance to the topic. From one she copied two passages, and

from the other she only copied the article’s abstract, and created a separate Word file to put the copied chunks.

(Observation notes, April 20, 2010)

The cut-and-pastes Iris saved in a Word file thus became her two main sources of evidence for composing her essay

(other than the lecture slide as an additional source). The following extract from her paper shows how Iris began giving

the second piece of evidence:

(8) S

econd, a journalist’s investigation on . . .also gives insight to how left hemisphere aid in writing skills. The journalist, named as Grant, was unsatisfied of what his students wrote, . . . He thus wanted to investigate the reason behind this error. He invited students to conduct research, and found . . . (Clark, 1998) In his way of processing research, he encountered some evidence backing him that left hemisphere is responsible for language. Such as

Weinstein has demonstrated that left hemisphere involves more of analysis and reasoning. This is further proofed

by Mintzberg, saying that the left hemisphere works for linguistics activities through thinking language.

The copied phrase, as indicated by the underlining here, seems much less of an issue for the reader of this text than

that of figuring out who is who in the extract. Examination of the two articles that Iris chose from her electronic search

and listed in her ‘‘Bibliography’’ is revealing:

� T

he two names (Edwards, 1992; Cattaneo, 2005) listed in what Iris called ‘‘Bibliography’’ are not found anywhere in her paper. Clark (1998) in the extract shown above should actually be Edwards and White (1992); ‘‘Clark’’ is the

first name of the first author. The ‘‘Cattaneo’’ in the ‘‘Bibliography’’ was a research article by a group of authors, i.e.,

Aziz-Zadeh, Cattaneo, Rochat, and Rizzolatti (2005); ‘‘Cattaneo’’ is actually the first name of the second author in

the group of authors.

� ‘‘

Grant’’ (Grant, 1991) is cited in Edwards and White (1992).

� A

lthough ‘‘he’’, ‘‘his’’ and ‘‘him’’ in the extract seem to refer to ‘‘Grant’’, ‘‘Weinstein’’ was in fact cited by Edwards

and White (1992) rather than by ‘‘Grant’’ as seems to be the case in the Extract.

� I

n the extract it is not clear who was citing ‘‘Mintzberg’’, though it was in fact again cited by Edwards and White (1992).

Mark wrote beneath the paragraph: ‘‘I’m really quite unsure about this whole paragraph and its credibility as

evidence.’’ It seems the problems shown above, at least on the face of it, stemmed from Iris’s lack of full proficiency in

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180172

English writing and her deficient knowledge of citation, including the distinction between primary and secondary

citations and between first and last names of authors. ‘‘Weinstein’’ and ‘‘Mintzberg’’ were in the two short passages

that Iris had cut and pasted from the first article (Edwards & White, 1992) into a Word file as she skimmed through the

first couple of pages of the article (the two names were on the second page of the article). She thus wrote the last two

sentences in the extract above based on those two passages she had saved.

To provide the third piece of evidence in the assignment, Iris began (without trying to read the article) by first

cutting and pasting the Abstract of the second article (Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2005) into her Word file. After editing

(including removing those sentences that seemed irrelevant and particularly hard to digest, and changing active to

passive voice), she produced the following (underlining indicates reproduction):

(9) I

1

ther

n the first experiment, 2 left frontal lobe sites are stimulated. They are a motor site (left posterior site) and a

nonmotor site in correspond to the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus. The second experiment focuses on

the right hemisphere in which the motor site and nonmotor site of the right hemisphere are stimulated. The result

showed that rTMS can induce a covert SA when applied to areas over the brain that are pertinent to language. It

further shows that both the left posterior and the left anterior site are critical to language elaboration.

The interview extract below (where the RA was sitting next to Iris observing her working process on the computer

and asking questions from time to time) captures Iris’s relatively ‘‘direct’’ way (as Iris put it) of using the Abstract of

Aziz-Zadeh et al. (2005) as her third piece of evidence.

(10)

Here ‘‘y

e was a

RA:

i’’ was utte

lso an elem

Will you rephrase what you have read or do you use the words directly?

Iris:

yi 1

– all quite directly [laughing], save me the trouble for doing the thinking myself. If I think it looks OK, I’ll just

type up the exact words. Thanks for your reminder. [laughing]

RA:

[laughing] Never mind. Just want to know how you’d use it. Is it OK with the tutor? Expecting you to use it directly?

Iris:

Not necessarily. The difference is the grade. If I use it this way, I’ll get a pretty low grade [laughing]. I feel that these

are the definitions which I couldn’t create by myself but the elaboration part I can use my own language.

RA:

so-

Iris:

so it’s OK to use it [laughing]

(Interview in Cantonese, April 20, 2010)

Iris’s light-hearted manner here (apparent lack of anxiety in performing an act that she felt would likely to be

disfavored by Mark and that might lead to a low grade) contrasted with her emotion-charged comment, presented

above in extract (4), on her never intending to ‘‘copy thought’’ but just not knowing ‘‘how to deal with it.’’ A possible

explanation for such contrast is, as she explained in the scenario above, she felt she could not create her own definition,

so there was not much she could do other than adopting a rather ‘‘direct’’ approach when trying to write from a highly

technical text that she had difficulty rephrasing. Her response later in the conference with Mark confirmed this, which

accounted for her patchwriting:

(11)

Mark:

r

e

Why do you think this is happening? Any idea?

Iris:

Because

Mark:

You took that, what did you do?

Iris:

I took this – I couldn’t understand.

Mark:

You couldn’t understand. Why you’re using it?

Iris:

I don’t know how to give the example.

(Conference in English, May 14, 2010)

Before the conference Mark had underlined a few strings in Iris’s text, adding comments like ‘‘source’’ and ‘‘sounds

like it’s from a source’’ in the margin; he followed this up by running Iris’s paper through Turnitin to confirm his

suspicion. During the conference with Iris, Mark tried to drive home the message ‘‘You must acknowledge.’’ By

referring to the Turnitin Originality Report, he underlined some of the reproduced strings (e.g., ‘‘that rTMS can induce

a covert SA when applied to areas over the brain that are pertinent to language’’) and put them into quotation marks. In

other words, Mark urged Iris to ‘‘acknowledge’’ the strings as quotations if she could not transform them. Apart from

ed in rising intonation, which, in spoken Cantonese, normally indicates surprise on the part of the speaker. Here it seems

nt of embarrassment and humor, i.e., Iris was aware that she was doing something that was not the preferred way.

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180 173

this, Mark pointed out that the sources Iris used were ‘‘a little bit beyond you and a little bit beyond me,’’ stating that

‘‘I’d rather you use introductory work.’’ Thus from Mark’s perspective, the sources Iris found were not suitable in

terms of the difficulty level.

Yumin: Strategic use of footnotes, secondary citations, and blending. In contrast to Iris, who spent only about two

hours on the assignment, Yumin worked on it over several days, going the extra mile to find sources to cite. He did not

use the lecture notes but he cited the textbook (Yule, 2006) twice in his essay (‘‘to give the lecturer a message that I’ve

read the textbook,’’ as he explained in an interview). In order not to exceed the word limit (500–700 words) and yet to

show his effort, Yumin decided to put much of the referencing into footnotes, nine in total. The footnotes gave Yumin

the space to be thorough in his citations. As a result, the main text of his essay just about reached the limit (698 words),

whereas the nine footnotes totaled over 400 words.

Somewhat similar to Iris, who relied on a few segments in two articles for writing up much of her text, Yumin

photocopied a few relevant pages from Obler and Gjerlow (1999) (a book written in the style of scientific prose without

being highly technical) and made good use of the relevant parts in those few pages in composing his text. The pages

described the split-brain experiment, dichotic listening, and the Wada test, which made up the three pieces of evidence

Yumin provided to meet the requirement of the assignment. Although he cited Obler and Gjerlow for his description of

the first, he cited other references which he selected from Wikipedia for his description of the other two (which in fact

was also based on Obler and Gjerlow’s). Like Iris, Yumin also engaged in textual borrowing, but from a variety of

sources: Obler and Gjerlow, Wikipedia, and sources accessed through Wikipedia (e.g., by clicking on a doi link

available in a Wikipedia entry). Yumin’s strategic searching for references was captured in a diagram (also presented

in Li & Casanave, 2011) representing the steps Yumin went through in composing four of his footnotes (Footnotes 1, 2,

6, and 8) (see Fig. 1).

Interviews with Yumin indicated that although he believed it was undesirable to cite Wikipedia itself, it was a good

idea to select references from Wikipedia. He could cite Wikipedia references (e.g., Kimura (1967) in Footnote 6 and

Wada (1949) in Footnote 8) without actually reading those sources. Yumin confirmed this strategy during interviews

(both when the present study was conducted and a year later, in a follow-up interview on May 20, 2011). To turn to

Yumin’s main text, in Table 1 we reproduce in full two paragraphs from his paper to illustrate how he strategically

blended source texts and his own contributions through patchwriting strategies.

Yumin’s text shown in Table 1 consists of two paragraphs where he meant to provide the second and the third pieces

of evidence by citing more than two sources. It seems Yumin’s patchwriting strategies echo those seen in an example in

Introna and Hayes (2008), in which a student laminated a large chunk of source text into his argument. In that case, the

student’s point was in opposition to the point intended in the source text. Here, although Yumin was not proposing a

line of argument different from his sources but was instead gathering information from them to use as his ‘‘evidence,’’

he likewise skillfully built the patchwriting (what Introna & Hayes, 2008, p. 115, refer to as ‘‘grey plagiarism’’) into

Fig. 1. The possible routes Yumin took for writing up four of his footnotes.

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180174

his own scheme of reasoning such that Mark did not notice anything unusual. The relationships between the various

sources and Yumin’s text were ‘‘occluded’’ rather than visible (Pecorari, 2006).

Perusing his text against the sources he used, we can notice the following:

� Y

Ta

Y

Y

(3

umin’s text re-uses some technical terms, which itself is generally not considered plagiarism (Barks & Watts,

2001); yet the patchwriting here goes beyond reproducing technical terms.

� Y

umin was able to integrate the re-used phrases, strings, and clauses into his line of reasoning. In particular, the multiple instances of logical/temporal connectives in his text are striking – e.g., in paragraph (3): However,

Therefore, Nevertheless, To illustrate, Consequently, In contrast; in paragraph (4): For instance, Consequently, More

evidently, After, Simultaneously.

� L

ooking at the sources Yumin cited (mainly through the footnotes), we can see that Yumin considered it desirable to cite the original source, e.g., Wada (1949) (in Footnote 8), which he took from Wikipedia, as we noted earlier, even

when his account of the ‘‘Wada test’’ was based on Obler and Gjerlow’s (1999) account of it (but Wada (1949) was

not cited by Obler and Gjerlow). We also see how he tried to mix in his own interpretation: that Ganong’s (1963)

ble 1

umin’s text and the source texts (underlining indicating the overlaps between the two).

umins’ text Source text actually used Sources cited in the Footnotes

) However, being linked by the corpus

callosum through which communication

and coordination is conducted (see Fig.

2), the two hemispheres of the brain

inherently influence each other and thus

damage to one side may also affect the

other (p. 140). Therefore, the exclusivity

of left-hemisphere-damages’

responsibility for those language deficits

discussed above is greatly challenged.

Nevertheless, doubtfulness can be

cleared reasonably by the experiments

conducted upon the ‘‘split-brain

patients’’, in whom intra-hemispheric

communication is no longer possible. To

illustrate, one experiment has the patient

sit at a table with a non-transparent

screen blocking the objects behind, who

is then asked to reach the objects with

different hand respectively [Footnote 3].

Consequently, if the patient reaches with

the left hand, he will be unable to name

the object because tactile information

about it is conveyed only to the right

hemisphere [Footnote 4]. In contrast,

objects not seen, but reached with the

right hand are readily named. Further

research upon this phenomenon

indicates that, the right hemisphere of

the brain only operates with discrete

combinations of whole continuous

images, whereas it is the left hemisphere

that functions with continual

combinations of discrete signs, which is

readily coded into natural language (see

Fig. 3) [Footnote 5]. Therefore, without

mutual interaction between two

hemispheres, left-hemispheric

localization for language is even more

clear and undeniable.

[. . .] Acoustic stimuli arrive at the brain along both contralateral and ipsilateral

pathways. Visual information from each

visual hemifield is sent to the opposite

hemisphere (see Fig. 2.8). In the normal

human brain, all of his information is shared

between the two hemispheres as signals are

passed via the corpus callosum, the bundle

of some 200 million nerve fibers connecting

the left and right hemispheres. There is,

however, a small but well-studied

population of individuals in whom this

inter-hemispheric communication is no

longer possible. [. . . . . .about 10 sentences

follow from here].

One type of experiment has the split-brain

patient sit at a table with a screen blocking

the view of objects on the other side. If the

patient reaches behind the screen with the

left hand, tactile information about the

object is conveyed only to the right

hemisphere and the person will be unable to

name the object held. Objects not seen, but

held in the right hand are readily named

(Obler & Gjerlow, 1999, pp. 31–32; Fig. 2 in

Yumin’s text was a reproduction of Fig. 2.8

in the source).

In general, the right hemisphere operates

with discrete combinations of whole

continuous images, whereas the left

hemisphere functions with continual

combinations of discrete signs (Glezerman

& Balkoski, 1999, p. 22. The reference was

not cited in Yumin’s text; neither was it

found in the references list. Instead, he gave

a wrong reference to Fig. 3 right beneath the

Figure and Footnote 5 gave the same wrong

reference).

Footnote 3 indicates the experiment is

‘‘retrieved from the study of’’ Obler and

Gjerlow.

Footnote 4 gives a quote from Ganong (1963) –

‘‘the right side of the brain controls muscles on

the left side of the body’’ and vice versa – and

then notes ‘‘This scientific fact is repeatedly

employed as an experimental condition in this

paper [Yumin’s paper] as in the dichotic

listening technique and the Wada test.’’

Footnote 5 gave a wrong source dated 2005; it

was not clear how this mistake occurred.

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180 175

Table 1 (Continued )

Yumins’ text Source text actually used Sources cited in the Footnotes

(4) Apart from those cerebrally deficient

populations, evidence authenticating the

left-hemisphere dominance for language

can also be drawn from normal people with

uninjured brains. For instance, in a test

called the dichotic listening technique

[Footnote 6], different auditory information

is presented synchronously to both ears of

the candidate, who is then asked to repeat

back everything he hears. Consequently,

most candidates will ignore the information

presented to his left ear while clearly grasp

that from the opposite side. Based on the

fact that right ear has stronger connections

to left cerebral hemisphere than it does to

the right (conversely for the left ear)

[Footnote 7], the right-ear-information

being better processed indicates that the

auditory center which is closely related to

language ability is more sensitive in the left

hemisphere than in the right. More

evidently, another technique called the

‘‘Wada test’’ [Footnote 8] has an anesthetic

called sodium amytal injected into the

candidate’s artery leading to one side of the

brain or the other. After the drug being

delivered to the language side of the brain, a

temporary paralysis of language function is

experienced. Simultaneously, the arm

opposite the patient’s ‘‘language

hemisphere’’ gradually loses senses due to

the suspended operation of that hemisphere

[Footnote 9]. It turns out that predominantly

the right arms that are reported to be

conscious-losing, which evidence the

converging of the ‘‘language hemisphere’’

and the left hemisphere, thus confirming the

left hemispheric localization for language in

the brain.

This technique relies on the fact that the

right ear has stronger connections to the left

hemisphere than it does to the right (and

conversely for the left ear). Thus

information presented to the right ear, while

it will be sent to both hemispheres’ auditory

centers, will be better processed

contralaterally. Under normal

circumstances, we see no effects of this

curious organization, but when we

‘‘overload the system,’’ we can infer that

once hemisphere or the other performs

better for a given sort of stimulus type. For

example, if normal subjects hear triads of

different words presented simultaneously to

both ears (the right ear might hear ‘‘2,’’ ‘‘8,’’

‘‘5’’ while the left ear hears ‘‘9,’’ ‘‘1,’’ ‘‘6’’),

and asked to repeat back everything they

hear, most subjects are more likely to forget

‘‘1,’’ the information that went to the left ear

– that is, the right hemisphere – from the

mid-point of the triad (Obler & Gjerlow,

1999, pp. 30–31).

In a technique called the Wada test, an

anesthetic called sodium amytal is injected

into the artery leading to the side of the brain

or the other. If the drug is delivered to the

language side of the brain, a temporary

paralysis of language function is

experienced. The patient stands with both

arms extended forward from the shoulders.

Slowly the arm opposite the patient’s

‘‘language’’ hemisphere – usually the right

arm – goes down as the brain areas of that

opposite hemisphere that should be

available for keeping it up are no longer

operating (Obler & Gjerlow, 1999, pp. 28–

29).

Footnote 6 says ‘‘The dichotic listening

technique is retrieved from the study of

Kimura, D. (1967). . .’’

Footnote 7 is a cross-reference to Footnote 4:

‘‘Refer to the theory from W.F. Ganong

mentioned above’’.

Footnote 8 indicates ‘‘the Wada test technique

is retrieved from the study of Wada, J. (1949)’’.

Footnote 9 is the same as Footnote 7, i.e., cross-

referencing to Footnote 4: ‘‘Refer to the theory

from W.F. Ganong mentioned above.’’

theory (each side of the brain controls the muscles of the body on the other side) underlies all three experiments he

was describing (split-brain patients, dichotic listening, and Wada test). He thus cited Ganong’s theory three times in

Footnotes 4, 7, and 9 respectively for each of the experiments described.

Though Yumin’s patchwriting seemed more extensive than Iris’s, we see evidence in these examples that he had

digested the prose of those sources he had consulted better than had Iris, and endeavored to integrate the words from

the sources into his own text. Indeed, this is how Mark reacted when going through Yumin’s paper. Because of the

paper’s overall coherence, he was thus not prompted to check the paper with Turnitin as he did with Iris’s text.

However, when the patchwriting (as demonstrated in Table 1) was later pointed out to him by Yongyan during an

interview, Mark expressed concern (see Pecorari (2006) for a professor’s similar reaction when prompted to notice the

textual borrowing in a student’s text). It is interesting to note that Mark was ambivalent over Yumin’s patchwriting:

Unlike Iris’s text, which made him feel that ‘‘someone else is speaking,’’ he believed that Yumin had integrated the

sources well into the paper. Nevertheless, when made aware of the inappropriate borrowing, he acknowledged that

Yumin’s way of reproducing strings of words from sources was not acceptable (‘‘I would have taken him to task’’).

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180176

Discussion

In this case study involving two ESL students writing a linguistics assignment in an introductory course, we aimed

to achieve a holistic understanding of the meaning and implications of novice academic writers’ attempts to write from

sources the way they used, as manifested firstly in their processes of preparing their papers, secondly in the ways they

used source material, and thirdly in the instructor’s evaluation of their textual products. This integrated perspective is

an important contribution our study makes to this special issue. Additionally, we have highlighted interesting

discrepancies between students’ beliefs and practices and revealed their instructor’s awareness of their (mis)use of

source texts. Although the beliefs of these two novice writers about what is considered inappropriate use of source

texts matched with the university’s views of plagiarism, their beliefs (naı̈ve and oversimplified as they were) were not

enacted in practice and the instructor was unaware of the complexities of the problem.

To summarize, working on the same assignment, the two students in this study differed in how they constructed

their papers and got different grades. Nevertheless, both students seemed to understand what plagiarism was according

to the university policy, both relied heavily on web sources and used secondary citations as primary citations (Pecorari,

2006), and evidence of patchwriting was clear in both students’ texts. Mark responded to the two students’ texts very

differently, opting to check Iris’s paper with Turnitin because her writing lacked coherence and stylistic integration and

was filled with specifics that needed attribution. By contrast, Yumin’s text was integrated and smooth to Mark, and he

did not find it necessary to check his paper with Turnitin, although he became concerned when he was made aware of

Yumin’s patchwriting. Based on our observation in our respective teaching contexts, as well as evidence from many

studies (e.g., Chandrasoma et al., 2004; Introna & Hayes, 2008; Pecorari, 2006; Shi, 2010, 2011), we believe these

students’ strategies for composing are probably commonplace, and as such raise a number of issues that might both

help to clarify novice writers’ problems in completing a source-based writing assignment and suggest some

pedagogical implications for broader consideration in university writing.

The place of reading in a source-based assignment

This short assignment for first-year undergraduates in an introductory linguistics class asked students to pull

together several sources of information on one topic, that is, to report information from sources. At the interview

following his conference with Iris, Mark noted it was ‘‘a kind of regular essay,’’ a ‘‘general essay about a topic’’ and

‘‘not argument.’’ As for the purpose of this assignment, he noted ‘‘the idea is to deepen understanding as well as a form

of assessment’’ and said the assignment could serve to prepare students for their second year assignments (e.g., in

terms of how to structure an essay and use sources properly). However, he did not indicate that in-depth reading was

part of his expectations.

For Iris the assignment was more of a ‘‘question and answer’’ type of paper, to be done as quickly as possible, so her

primary strategy was to find three pieces of useful evidence as efficiently as possible and to list them without having to

study them carefully. She did not take the assignment very seriously, as she acknowledged in an interview with

Yongyan the following year. Commenting on what she might do if she were to re-do the linguistics assignment, Iris

said:

(12) I

learned [from the conference with Mark] when I use others’ materials, I have to cite properly, because I don’t

think I have cited properly. [. . .] I mean what is the surname, what is the middle name, the format of citation, I don’t have the clear understanding, but – and the other thing is I need to reshape it in my own way. [. . .] I will firstly read the passage comprehensively deeply just like the way I read this passage because last year when I do

the assignment I didn’t read like this diligently. (Interview in English, April 11, 2011)

Apart from reflecting upon the mechanics of citation, in this self-reflection Iris was revealing, after the fact, her

understanding of the importance of diligent reading when writing from sources.

For Yumin doing the linguistics assignment seemed more of an occasion to display his hard work or to perform

according to his perceived expectations (Harwood & Petrić, 2012) in order to get a good grade. Therefore, he

strategically navigated Wikipedia, accumulated references, diligently built his source-laden footnotes, and made sure

his text was thoroughly referenced throughout (even though the references were mostly taken from Wikipedia). His

‘‘reading’’ of the sources can also be characterized as ‘‘piecemeal search reading’’ (Allison & Ip, 1991, p. 44), like

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180 177

Iris’s. Such partial reading is of course facilitated by the ‘‘intertextual agility’’ (Chandrasoma et al., 2004, p. 173) that

the students enjoy in the web-space (Carr, 2010). Yet we should point out that this is perhaps also partly due to the

information-oriented nature of the students’ linguistics assignment: The students needed to collect and display, not

study deeply, information on their topic. The cases of Iris and Yumin have helped us realize that any discussions of

plagiarism and other kinds of textual borrowing need to consider carefully the role of reading in source-based writing

assignments much more than they usually do.

The difficulty level of sources for an assignment in an introductory course

Largely using a hit-and-miss approach (Burton & Chadwick, 2000), Iris located materials that were too difficult for

her to read. Yumin’s main source (a few pages from Obler & Gjerlow, 1999) was more prose-like and thus easier to

digest, but he did engage in textual borrowing from both this source and other apparently highly specialized sources

(accessed through Wikipedia or otherwise). Evidence that difficult texts encourage inappropriate textual borrowing

among students has been reported (e.g., Leki & Carson, 1997; Lewkowicz, 1994; Roig, 1999). Some academics have

also testified that they too are more likely to engage in patchwriting when they deal with difficult texts than if they

work with relatively easy-to-read texts (Howard, 1999, p. 90; Roig, 2001), and that collaboration with others on

difficult writing, not allowed for students, is routine for faculty (Haviland & Mullin, 1999).

We can thus ask to what extent first-year students are expected to read and write from difficult texts in introductory

courses where the subject matter is probably quite new for them. What kinds of guidance should they be given as to

how to search for and select sources that are appropriate for the purposes of particular assignments? And importantly,

how can instructors be encouraged to examine the textual evidence of students’ search and composing strategies rather

than just relying on pattern-matching from plagiarism detection software?

Complexities of attribution in source-based writing assignments

Even though university plagiarism policies seem quite straightforward, as does instruction on the basics of citation

conventions and advice such as Mark’s to Iris that ‘‘you must acknowledge,’’ the reality of how students understand

and practice such policies and how teachers deal with individual cases is complex and fraught with ambiguity.

Examples in our study show that novice writers often do not distinguish between primary and secondary citations, and

that they probably do not know that patchwriting is generally considered unacceptable in a text submitted for

assessment. The EAP class that both Iris and Yumin took in Semester 1 of their first year discourages the use of

Wikipedia as a source of citation. However, they may not go further to help students learn to use Wikipedia to assist

learning and writing, when it often may be a first- (and last?) stop source for students (Stapleton, 2010). These

problems are not usually discussed in beginning EAP classes, which tend to focus on teaching citation styles and rules.

Once the basics are taught, teachers (Western-educated, like Mark, in particular) tend not to be very forgiving of

students’ mis-use of source material. Such a reaction reflects a transmission model of education, rather than a

participatory and practice-oriented one (Prior, 1998).

In our study, we saw evidence that the students showed some anxiety about being accused of plagiarizing (Iris),

awareness of severe sanctions of plagiarizing (Yumin), openness about the sources they cited, and an attempt to refer to

and cite sources, even if they had not read all of them (both). For an introductory assignment, if the students had

followed Mark’s (belated) suggestion to Iris to use more ‘‘introductory’’ sources (which themselves are filled with

citations to the sources of their information) rather than technical articles, would they have known how to cite those

sources? The complexities of attribution seem to exceed the advice in plagiarism policies.

The place of patchwriting in the work of novice writers

Learning to write from sources requires years, not weeks or months, of practice. If novice academic writers need

many attempts at writing from sources in order to learn the complexities of appropriate textual borrowing within

introductory courses, let alone within different disciplines, we are brought again to the question of the place of

patchwriting in the work of novice writers (Howard, 1995, 1999, 2007). As we discussed in the beginning of the paper,

patchwriting does not carry the negative connotation of plagiarizing. Although we agree with Howard that

patchwriting is ordinarily not acceptable on students’ final drafts, we do not wish to automatically accuse students of

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180178

plagiarism who patchwrite even on final drafts. (Howard, 2000, p. 489, goes as far as to say ‘‘Let’s quit using the term

plagiarism altogether.’’) We see patchwriting as an important strategy (used even by academics in professional

publications, as noted above) that deserves much more attention as an instructional device in undergraduate classes

where students are learning to write from sources. We believe further that assignments need to be nonstandardized and

localized in their design, to discourage shallow information searching and mindless copying by students.

Conclusion

We hope that readers will conclude, as we did, that although the two students borrowed and cited source material

inappropriately, they were not plagiarists, but novice writers who were concerned about not violating the university

policies. Given that they knew little about their topic and had little experience writing academic papers from sources,

they did their best to complete the assignment as instructed, relying heavily on the Internet, on secondary citations, and

on patchwriting. We need another label for such writers, one that does not carry the negative baggage of ‘‘plagiarist.’’

We agree with many of the scholars who have written on the topic of plagiarism that teachers and scholars need to

rethink the concept and discourse of plagiarism, a difficult challenge in a competitive, product- and evaluation-

oriented educational system (Zwagerman, 2008). Teachers need to invest thought into designing assignments

(possibly ungraded ones), become more aware of students’ processes of completing an assignment, attend more

closely to students’ reading practices, and be more forgiving and even supportive of patchwriting. It is also with such a

stance that teachers are most likely to exploit the educational potential of Turnitin (Emerson, 2008) rather than using it

primarily for detection and punishment. Identifying strings of ‘‘copied’’ words in students’ texts is probably the most

superficial and least educational aspect of helping students develop as writers.

Researchers face a challenge as well. Unlike what is needed for research based on impersonal survey studies or one-

shot interviews, those who closely follow individual students and their texts need to find ways to help students who fear

being accused of plagiarism feel comfortable talking openly about their strategies and decisions. Even if the researcher

is not the student’s instructor and has no influence on grades, young novice writers may still feel hesitant to talk openly

with someone on his or her own university campus. As Shi (2010, p. 21) cautioned, students ‘‘might not want to talk

about their plagiarized texts with the researcher who might disagree with them on this sensitive issue.’’

Finally, this very small case study adds to the literature on plagiarism and textual borrowing by providing more

evidence that, in our view, university plagiarism policies need to be changed. Among other changes, we believe

with others that different labels need to be given to intentional plagiarism versus unintentional misuse of source

texts. The former (cheating; the intention to pass someone else’s work off as one’s own) deserves the label of

plagiarism, prototypical plagiarism (Pecorari, 2006), and fraud (Howard, 2000); the latter (Internet misuse; lack of

knowledge of how to use primary and secondary citations; inability to deal with texts beyond the writer’s linguistic

and technical levels) is better labeled patchwriting (Howard, 1995), textual borrowing (Casanave, 2004;

Pennycook, 1996), or language re-use (Flowerdew & Li, 2007). 2

We realize that changing the labels we use for

novice writers’ inappropriate use of source texts will not be easy. But the attempt needs to be made, and so will

require much less concern with grades on the part of everyone (Zwagerman, 2008), much closer consultation than

teachers usually have with student writers on topics, writing strategies, and reading, and perhaps consultation of a

different kind than we usually give (rules for a, b, c; proscriptions against x, y, z). If novice writers do not intend to

deceive, they should neither be punished nor labeled plagiarists, but educated, through example, explanation, and a

great deal of practice.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous participants in this study for their time and cooperation, and the guest

editors’ as well as the journal editors’ comments on the earlier versions of this paper. This study was funded by the

University of Hong Kong’s Seed Funding Program for Basic Research.

2 Here we did not quote Chandrasoma et al.’s (2004) transgressive vs. nontransgressive intertextuality, as this pair of terms is not defined by the

authors in terms of intentionality. Here we wish to use the terms that distinguish more clearly between intention to deceive and unintentional misuse

of sources.

Y. Li, C.P. Casanave / Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 165–180 179

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Yongyan Li received her education and then taught in mainland China until 2003 when she moved to Hong Kong for further studies. Since then she

has been studying issues related to English as an Additional Language (EAL) students writing in disciplines as well as EAL scholars writing for

publication. She is currently teaching at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hong Kong.

Christine Pearson Casanave taught at a Japanese university from 1990 until 2003, and from 1994 to 2004 as adjunct in the MATESOL program at

Teachers College, Columbia University in Tokyo. Since 2004, she has also worked on and off at Temple University in Japan in a graduate program in

language teacher education (currently doing online doctoral dissertation advising). Her specialty is second language writing and writing for

publication. In 2012 she is Visiting Scholar at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

The two authors share a research interest in the writing development of ESL/EFL students, including their learning to write from sources, across

disciplines and at different levels of academic study. Working from two geographical sites, we synergized our intellectual exploration of the issues

examined in this paper and moved our thinking forward as a result of this enjoyable joint authorship.