Plagiarism: A Global Phenomenon

Academic writing is specially a challenging task for ESL/EFL students as it entails an assortment of cognitive and linguistic processes which is beyond their capability. Consequently, to fulfill the writing requirement of academia, an unexperienced writer very often ventures to make use of other peoples’ words and ideas without citing the source-a practice commonly known as “plagiarism”. Scholars have traced various kinds of plagiarism in student academic writing. However, there exists an underlying contradiction among the scholars regarding the reasons for plagiarism in academic writing committed by students. One segment of researchers believes students as exclusively liable for committing plagiarism. On the Contrary, the researchers with opposite views, underscore the concern of responsibility of educational institutions and academics. This article aims to collate seminal works on plagiarism which concentrate on the aspects- reasons, and types of plagiarism, and the role of education institutions to minimize plagiarism. Keywords: academic writing, plagiarism, reason, types, institution role. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-3-08 Publication date: January 31st 202

An Overview of Theories Explaining Plagiaristic Behavior of Students

In academic writing, creating own text integrating appropriate sources is one of the troublesome areas for both L1 (for whom English is the first language) and L2 (for whom English is the second language) writers. As a result, to meet the writing demand of the academia an inexperienced writer adopts the technique of using other peoples’ language and concepts without acknowledging the source- which is known as “plagiarism”, a kind of academic dishonesty. However, there has been an outstanding dichotomy among the researchers regarding the reasons for plagiarism in academic writing committed by students. One group of researchers consider students as solely responsible for committing plagiarism. By this cohort of researchers, students’- lack of knowledge and skill in source acknowledgement, poor time management, busy schedule, procrastination, deficiency in academic writing, absence of ethical reasoning, attaining recognition- are mentioned as primary reasons of plagiarism. On the other hand, the other group of scholars brings forth the issue of responsibility of the educational institutions and academics as well. In this review, standpoints of scholars of both the schools explaining reasons of plagiarism are presented in a brief. Keywords: Plagiarism, theory, dichotomy, responsibility, educational institutions. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-25-11 Publication date:September 30th 201

Mixed Methods Research: An Overview for Beginner Researchers

Mixed methods research design implicates merging or incorporating qualitative and quantitative research and data in a single study. Though the advantages of employing mixed methods are convincing, the methodology has some shortcomings. Lack of time, energy and resources pose main obstacles behind not undertaking mixed methodology as research design. Other than the operational issues there are criticisms regarding the philosophical underpinning and research method typologies. However, as this methodology is the combination of two dominant research genres, it has the potential to offset the shortcomings of one single method and therefore, offers more validity and reliability to the findings of a research. The aim of this article is to acquaint the beginner researchers with the pros and cons of mixed methods research which has an immense potentiality to be employed in various fields of academia including social sciences, health science, and technology. Keywords: Mixed methods research, philosophical underpinning, rationale, controversy, potentiality. DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/58-05 Publication date:July 31st 2019