Lesko, John Philip

English

The current work represents an attempt to provide an account of the dynamics
and explanatory variables in cases of apparent plagiarism and derivation involving
ESL students. Through an extension of the Dynamic Model of L2 Writing, the
explanatory variables and dynamic interactions involved in derivative writing
contexts are analysed. An analysis is also undertaken of the distinct nature of
appropriation by ESL students as opposed to general appropriation within the
broader, postmodern-influenced academy, and within the popular communications
genres of music video production, journalism, the news media, literature, and popular
fiction. A brief history of referencing and citation is outlined, and following this
history and description of currently widespread appropriation activity, the theoretical
Dynamic Model-influenced framework is presented.

This framework relies on, and is integrated with, fieldwork data results
obtained from conducting a student questionnaire among 135 ESL students enrolled
in pre-sessional EAP courses (followed by informal interviews and discussion
sessions), by conducting questionnaires among 53 MSc course co-ordinators and 27
EAP specialists from language centres across the UK, and by analysing particular
cases of derivation/plagiarism and the texts involved in those cases. These crossreferenced
questionnaire and case study results are presented in separate appendices.
The study results, in line with the immediate influence hypothesis, suggest that
the immediate influences and variables of an L2 writing context, such as L2
proficiency, time constraints, lack of confidence, writing anxiety and a desperate
"survival mentality" mindset, contribute to a decision-making-processw hich leads to
the use of derivation/plagiarism as a composing strategy. In such L2 contexts of
derivation, the text-mediated reader-writer interaction, occurring within a discourse
community (the space surrounding a text), is disrupted by the importation of a text
(and author) which should have remained exterior to the interaction, into what should
have been a genuine interchange and discourse community contribution.

After discussing possible motivation and opportunity considerations behind the
use of derivative writing strategies, and giving suggestions for preventing, detecting,
and investigating apparent plagiarism in ESL contexts, recommendations are made
for institutional policy and procedure, the limitations of the current study are
discussed, ideas for further research are presented, and the relationship of
postmodem ideology to academe in the Information Age is discussed, culminating in
some thought-provoking implications and questions for the Foucault-Barthes
assertion that the death of the Author has occurred

Edinburgh Research Archive

The dynamics of derivative writing: explanatory variables for plagiarism and derivative language in ESL texts

https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/6747/1/505672_VOL1.pdf

The Dynamics of Derivative Writing: Explanatory Variables for Plagiarism and Derivative Language in ESL Texts

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