UPSI Digital Repository (UDRep)
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Abstract : Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris |
One of the plagiarism acts that commonly occur among undergraduates is the
unintentional plagiarism. This could happen due to their lack of knowledge on how to
write references correctly. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the
effectiveness of using the Educational Intervention (EI) (Smedley et al., 2015) to reduce
plagiarism act among ESL undergraduates (70 undergraduates) taking the PPU 6022
Academic Writing course at one of the private institutions in Perak. In this study, quasi-
experimental design was used to gather the quantitative data by using the Avoiding
Plagiarism Test (APT) and collection of exercises and assignments. Meanwhile focus
group interview was used to collect the qualitative data. The result of one way ANOVA
for the post-tests between the experimental group and the control group are
(F(1,68)=10.593, p=.002) for writing in-text citation, (F(1,68)=21.975, p=.000) for
paraphrasing and (F(1,68)= 8.011, p =.006) for writing a reference list using APA style.
The analysis showed that the improvements of the experimental group was higher and
significantly different to the control group. Meanwhile, the results of the repeated
measures ANOVA for the gathered exercises and assignments of the experimental
group are (F(2,68)=1.139, p=.326) for writing in-text citation, (F(2,68)=48.561,
p=.000) for paraphrasing and (F(2,68)=.729, p=.486) for writing a reference list using
APA style. This showed that the participants in the experimental group demonstrated
improvements in their referencing skills however the improvements were not
statistically significant except for paraphrasing. Besides, the analysis of focus group
interview reported positive response towards the use of EI in improving their
referencing skills. Overall, it can be concluded that the intervention was effective in
improving ESL undergraduates’ referencing skills however it can be improved to
achieve its optimum capability. This is an important study as it offers an initiative to
combat plagiarism acts amongst undergraduates at tertiary education. |
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