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Most often, a lot of tutors tend to get worried because, students copy verbatim from the internet, books and friends when given an assignment. The problem is not really about the ‘cheating’ involved but at least cite the sources. This is the reason most tutors now make it mandatory for students to reference and use a particular reference style.
Students may plagiarize for many reasons, ranging from laziness to sloppiness to a lack of understanding about the reason for citations, but teachers can employ a series of strategies to prevent problems while also teaching students good scholarly practices.
To begin with, a core reason for plagiarism is the fear of failure. Students are so afraid to disappoint the status they have already built and the high expectations people hold and they want to hold in high esteem their status of being clever or smart and as such, do not believe in themselves and therefore go ahead to plagiarize. They feel the already established work when presented will fetch good grades than racking their brains to come up with a write up for an assignment. Most students do not study to master the material but only learn to acquire good grades to prove their superiority to others. With such motivation, it’s clear these students are more likely to cheat to keep up their good name.
Another pressing cause of why students cheat is due to pressure. Enormous pressure from teachers and parents to complete assignments, compete for scholarships, and eventually place in the job market turns education process into a battle that suits the topic ‘survival of the fittest’. No one wants to be seen as a daft student so all speed up with assignments just to meet the deadline. Speed and accuracy are the hallmark. Due to this hallmark, students won’t mind using their feeding fee to purchase data just to get ‘accurate ‘ information to present as theirs when the date for assignment is due. Most students are with a focus geared towards results rather than acquired knowledge and skills.
The more intelligent a student is, the more pressure mounted upon them.
High expectations and unreasonable demands from tutors, parents and even peers lead students to the plagiarism and cheating syndrome and desire to be the best in everything they do. Feeling like they are stuck trying to handle that pressure, students struggle to manage it in all possible ways and these ways end up in one-way plagiarism. The stress students experience because of that continuous pressure may lead to unintentional plagiarism, forget about references, fail to paraphrase their sources right, or decide to use ideas and statements from their already-published works, ignoring the fact of self-plagiarism.
Last but not least, another common reason why students plagiarize is lack of interest in the field of study. While tutors don’t think that their subject can be boring, students sometimes just don’t care about the assigned topic and don’t want to waste their time working on it. It’s easier to just plagiarize someone else’s paper and leave more time for something interesting that from the student’s perspective.
