Language and Plagiarism. I spent a good portion of last week correcting student assignments, and I again ran into two common problems: (a) an inability for students to communicate in English and (b) plagiarism.

In my experience, the communication problem is fairly common, given that an increasing number of our student population does not have English (or French) as their first language. The tests that are used to assess a students ability to communicate in English (TOEFL, etc) are, in my opinion, worthless. My strategy is to enphasize to students the importance of being able to communicate in English, and to mark down their work accordingly. At the organizational level, I continue to bring up this issue, to raise awareness and see if something can be done about it. Based on what I have seen so far, it is going to take some time.

Plagiarism is especially frustrating to encounter. Most of what I have seen involves students copying text from documents found in e-journals or on the web, and pasting those into their assignments with little or no modification, and no citation. These cases I refer directly to the department, where the disciplinary office reviews their case and determines what the punishment will be .

I think the two problems may be linked. In my experence, almost every case of plagiarism I have encountered was carried out by a student who had poor communication skills. Many of them even offered that as an excuse: since they are not able to write in English, they stitch together bits that they copy from other documents. Needless to say, this excuse does not get them very far.

The plagiarism issue is more then just language, however. There are dishonest people out there that will try to get away with whatever they can, pleading ignorance whenever they get caught. Although I try very hard to give all my students the benefit of the doubt, and to assume they are honest, hard-working students, anyone I do catch plagiarizing gets written up. This way, the incident is in their file, preventing them from pleading ignorance more then one.

I can only hope that educators and educational institutions everywhere are as strict on these issues. Accepting into our communities students who are unable to communcate and who possess no sense of academic integrity undermines the integrity of institution of higher education.