Graduate Students’ Attitude Toward Plagiarism in Academic Writing

Plagiarism is one of academic dishonesty that becomes a central issue and challenge faced by the educational sector. Students who study in a higher level of education will face many kinds of academic writing, which is not easy to deal with. Moreover, students need to find information related to their writing to support theories and arguments for their academic writing. This study aims to find out graduate language students’ attitude toward plagiarism in academic writing. This present study used a quantitative approach and survey as the design of the study. The target population was all of the graduate students in language study program in the second semester from four departments; English Language Teaching, Indonesian Language Teaching, Arabic Language Teaching, and Keguruan Bahasa department. 86 students were chosen as a sample using random sampling. Questionnaire and interview were used as the instruments in this study. The questionnaire was divided into three parts; cognitive, emotional and behavior. The result shows that 66% or 57 students have a neutral attitude toward plagiarism. It means that they knew that plagiarism was an improper action, but they can tolerate plagiarism action. However, 33% or 28 students have a negative attitude toward plagiarism which means that they cannot tolerate plagiarism action. In contrast, only 1% or 1 student has a positive attitude toward plagiarism which means that they do not think that plagiarism is an improper action. Keywords: Attitude, Plagiarism, Academic Writing