Browsing by Author "Chaka Belayneh, Dejen"

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    A Preliminary Investigation into the Practice of Integrity in Academic Writing: First Year TEfl MA Students in Focus
    (Addis Ababa Universiy, 2011-05) Chaka Belayneh, Dejen; Gezehagn, Dr. Girma
    The main concern of this study was to investigate the practice of academic integrity at Addis Ababa University. To achieve this, questionnaires were designed and administered to the 2010/11 TEFL graduate entrants and their respective instructors. Interviews were also held with some voluntary instructors and randomly selected students. Then, the data gathered via questionnaires and interviews were interpreted and discussed. In this study, SPSS Software was used to process the data gathered through closed-ended questions. Accordingly, frequencies and percentages of the responses of informants were computed, and then quantitatively described and interpreted. In some cases, mean scores of the data were also performed. On the other hand, data collected through open-ended items and interview were qualitatively described and narrated. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative data analyzing methods were employed in this thesis. Thus, the findings of the study indicated that the students' English language proficiency shows gap in measuring up to the instructors' expectations. This is to mean that the abi lity of the students in writing clearly, precisely, and objectively is found to be a bit lower than what is expected. With regard to the prevalence of acts of plagiarism in the target students' academic writings, the study revealed that it is serious though students' understanding of the concepts of plagiarism and its consequences seems · to be good. The shortage of resource materials at the University to do further reading, time constraint, difficu lty in expressing ideas clearly in English, lack of awareness of plagiarism and its consequences, some personal traits and incapability of doing one's own works independently were among the major reasons for the students' temptations to plagiarise. Moreover, it seems that there is a gap in the policy to tackle the acts of academic dishonesty at the University. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that to overcome the problems of the acts of academic dishonesty, students should practice the target language persistently. Besides, students should acknowledge all sorts of sources they might refer to or else the University should penalize those who fail to do so. In connection with this notion, it was also suggested that the University should conduct continuous awareness rising trainings and workshops on the concepts of plagiarism and its consequences vigorously and teach the value of academic integrity so that the students would develop concerns for it. Yet again, frequent and timely feedbacks on the students' academic writings are called on as that would greatly contribute towards the promotion of academic integrity. Furthermore, it is recommended that the University should reassess it educational policy particularly its honour code. Finally, it is believed that the preliminary investigation conducted in this study might not be adequate and comprehensive. Therefore, further in -depth study should be conducted on how to detect plagiarism and hence promote academic integrity at the University.