NATI ESL endeavors to develop creative instincts in its students and help them effectively communicate their ideas. Towards this end, NATI ESL  is obligated to maintain high academic standards and will not tolerate plagiarism or any other form of academic cheating.

A substantial component of cheating consists of plagiarism or using someone else’s work without proper attribution and passing this material off as one’s own.  This may consist of one incorrect citation or the wholesale theft of a piece, but whether this is done intentionally or not, it is academically dishonest, and no amount of justification can excuse someone from stealing another’s work.

NATI ESL students need to understand that plagiarizing written material serves no purpose other than to detract from the intellectual worth of an assignment, a course, and, ultimately, an education.  Regardless of the extent to which it is done, a student who plagiarizes shirks an inherent responsibility to submit an assignment based on honest research and obtains a certificate or diploma that ultimately has been devalued because it is based on fraud.

Students are inclined to plagiarize because of:

• poor time management and organizational skills
• a perception of unrealistic deadlines for papers
• the belief that instructors are giving them too much work to do
• a lack of enough patience and commitment to engage in honest research
• coming from a country where plagiarism is not an academic issue
• confusion about how to properly cite sources
• pressure from peers and family
• competition for jobs and scholarships
• poor research and writing skills

NATI ESL wants its students to understand that they must resist the urge to seek the easy grade by stealing the intellectual property of someone else.  Specifically, plagiarism consists of reproducing the ideas, words or written statements without giving credit to the author and may take the following form:

• using another person’s theories or opinions without proper attribution
• quoting another person’s actual oral or written words without proper attribution
• paraphrasing someone else’s actual oral or written words without proper attribution
• resubmitting a previous academic work as a new product
• using any facts, statistics, drawings or graphs that are not common knowledge

Electronic plagiarism has become increasingly prevalent with the growth of digital information, bulletin boards, information servers, and electronic mail. This problem is compounded by students’ inability to critically evaluate internet sources.  There is a perception that online sources are public knowledge and therefore are not subject to the rules governing standard citation practices.  Because there is no quality control on the internet, students feel free to download papers from paper mills, simply change authors’ names and then submit these same papers as their work.  The ease of cutting and pasting resources, the proliferation of digital web-based documents and high-speed access to resources at any time have made it easier for students to plagiarize.

Plagiarism can be avoided if a student approaches a project ethically and is determined to submit his/her own work without stealing the intellectual efforts of others.  The keys are to keep one’s notes organized, know the sources of the information used and acknowledge these sources in footnotes or endnotes. Whether it is deliberate or unintentional, plagiarism suggests laziness, carelessness and the intent to deceive, and it is unacceptable to NATI ESL in any form.  If the student has some confusion about how to properly cite sources, then he/she can consult a style manual or the instructor. This is particularly important when dealing with online sources, which, because the URLs are unstable and often long, complex and confusing, can be especially difficult to cite.  Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of the student to become familiar with what constitutes plagiarism and not assume that the submission of plagiarized work will go undetected by NATI ESL.