Language Proficiency and Plagiarism Practices among Graduate Students

Abstract

The English language has been the medium of instruction in most universities and colleges in the world that is common and mostly used to threaten the integrity of the scientific literature and academic community due to plagiarism despite available detection applications. This study aims to determine the Language proficiency and Plagiarism Practices of Graduate Students under Education Program and Non-Education Program and be able to correlate the language proficiency and plagiarism practices. The graduate students from two programs were the sources of data for this study. Pivot Analysis and Correlation matrix process were used to determine the linear correlation of English proficiency scores and plagiarism percentage that was visualized using a Scatter Diagram with Loess Regression Interpolation. The result of the study shows that Education graduate students have higher scores in English Proficiency scores than Non-education graduate students. It also shows that non-graduate students tend to practice more plagiarism compared to the education of graduate students. Linear correlation also shows that there is a strong positive correlation of plagiarism practices among students. It is recommended that universities should be strict in the implementation of plagiarism detection to maintain academic integrity.

Keywords: plagiarism practices, language proficiency