English Education Department, State Islamic Institute of Kediri
*Corresponding e-mail: [email protected] Abstract:
One of difficult and important skills that should be mastered by students is writing. The lack of idea can trouble the students in writing. However, the idea of writing generally appears after reading some sources or another writing. When students find suitable sentence for their writing, they often merely adopt it. Unfortunately, this can be a serious case, named plagiarism. To avoid that, students need to understand about ‘paraphrase’, what it is and how to do it. Paraphrase, as important skill to avoid plagiarism in academic writing, is very essential to be mastered by EFL learners. This conceptual study aims to convey a discussion about paraphrasing method to avoid plagiarism issue. The types of plagiarism and some methods in paraphrasing are served in this article. This conceptual article is expected to give more information for those who want to improve their paraphrasing skill.
Keywords: conceptual article, paraphrase, academic writing, plagiarism
1. INTRODUCTION
Academic writing is a structured, formal, clear, objective, and complex writing (Hasna, Nurkamto, and Sulistyawati, 2021). Academic writing is often used to evaluate student's English competency. The language and pattern of academic writing is different from casual writing. English, as compulsory subject in Indonesian National Curriculum, is a foreign language for almost all students in Indonesia.
Thus, Indonesian students are mostly called as EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. There are four main skills that should be learned by the EFL learners. Writing is one of English skills that mentioned in Indonesian Curriculum and it becomes one of requirements in passing the school exam (Maiyoritsa & Wahyuni, 2021). . In higher education, writing is considered as very essential skill. It is because a requirement for graduates of undergraduate (S1), master S2), and postgraduate (S3) to publish academic paper (Fatimah, 2018). The regulation can be found in government regulation at The Decree of Director General of Higher Education No. 152/E/T/2012. Academic paper deals with any writings contained by the results of thought, experiment data, or theory about particular subject that are written using scientific setting. In conducting academic paper, the writer needs to master academic writing skills (Rakedzon & Baram-Tsabari, 2017).
In academic writing, the writer needs to refer to several scholarly sources as supporting idea of what the writer writes. Unfortunately, when the writer takes the idea carelessly, they can be called as plagiarist. Plagiarist is someone who does plagiarism. Plagiarism is a case when a person takes others’
idea and avows it as his (Sulaiman, 2015). Plagiarism is one of problems occurs in academic writing. To prevent the case of plagiarism, the writer is suggested to understand the concept of paraphrase.
Paraphrase, according to Davis (2013), is an activity of understanding the idea and rewrite it using different word, but in same meaning. There are several methods of paraphrase to help the writer completing his writing without any plagiarism problems.
The previous paragraphs become the researcher's concern in conducting this conceptual article.
The purpose of this article is to provide more insights about plagiarism and paraphrase in academic writing. By serving the knowledge about academic writing, plagiarism, and paraphrase, this article is
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expected to help many researchers produce original work without any plagiarism cases. Furthermore, the researchers expect that this article can give contribution for better further-academic-paper.
2. PLAGIARISM ISSUE IN ACADEMIC WRITING
Gaith defines writing as a written idea, thought, expression, or evaluation of particular topic that is arranged into some paragraphs by someone called a writer (Yuniati, 2015). While Bailey (Fatimah, 2018) stated that academic writing is an educational work that presents idea in formal setting. In academic writing there is a popular bad-term, named plagiarism.
Plagiarism, according to Wajdi, Sumartana, & Hudianingsih (2018), is an act of rewriting or retelling one's idea without mentioning the source. In short, plagiarism is a case when someone steals other's theory or thought and claims it as his. It is also generally known as 'cheating' in academic writing.
In addition, taking our idea from previous work and put it in another work is also called plagiarism, self-plagiarism.
According to Iskandar (Delilla, 2019), there are several characteristics as consideration whether or not a scientific writing contains with plagiarim issues. Those characteristics are served as follow:
a. There is no quotation marks ("") in direct quotation.
b. The original source is not mentioned after quoting c. The result of paraphrase is still similar to the main source d. The original source is not mentioned after paraphrasing
There is always a possibility for the writer to do a plagiarism. This is because the plagiarism is not always planned and intentionally done by the writer. Plagiarism can probably happen accidentally during the process of writing (Guraya & Guraya, 2017).
Furthermore, Rets and Ilya (2018), after collecting and concluding some sources related with plagiarism, stated that the types of plagiarism can be determined as follows;
a. Word-for-Word Duplication: The Word-for-Word Duplication deals with copying other's idea or information without changing every words the source has.
b. Fail Paraphrase: When someone tries to make paraphrase from a source but the sentence or text still has similar structure, then the paraphrase is failed.
c. Prohibitive Reference: Prohibitive Reference happens when someone put untrue data about the original source on his academic writing.
d. Deliberate Plagiarism: Someone is intentionally copies another's work.
e. Accidental Plagiarism: Accidental plagiarism often occurs when someone is not aware that their idea had already used in previous study and does a plagiarism
f. Colleague Plagiarism: Plagiarism can also happen among friends. Someone who copies their peer idea is also called as plagiarist.
g. Web Plagiarism: Students often use a web as their source. However, some web is written anonymously and then students do not provide the source they used. It is a web plagiarism.
h. Self-plagiarism: The self-plagiarism is done by the writer who takes his word from previous writing and put it in the next writing without providing the source.
In addition, concerning the consequence of plagiarism, Berlinck (2011) state that every institution has different regulation. The common punishment given to plagiarist are warning, suspension, public apology, etc. When it is students-teacher case, the teacher usually give them warning or score decrement.
When it is researcher-institution case, the punishment is commonly more serious, such as expulsion and revocation. Moreover, students or academia who do academic writing works can prevent those
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plagiarism issue by a) providing quotation mark on direct quotation, b) attaching applied sources, and c) implementing appropriate paraphrase.
3. CONCEPT OF PARAPHRASE
Paraphrase is very common term that often occurs in academic writing lesson. According to Alred, Brusaw, and Oliu (Hans, 2017), paraphrase deals with changing a sentence or paragraph into different sentence or paragraph with same or similar meaning. While Hirvela and Du (2013) stated that paraphrase refers to an attempt to deliver a thought, an opinion, a theory, or an idea of someone about particular subject by providing different vocabularies and sentence structure, but does not decrease and alter the original meaning. Additionally, Khairunnisa, Gatot, and Surmiyati (2014) provides some criteria of good paraphrase. The first criteria states that paraphrase contains the idea of expert but represented in different writing style. The next criteria is unity. The paraphrase should be unified as understandable text. Third, when paraphrase is used in writing, the writer does not need to provide quotation mark. However, the writer have to mention the source address as replacement. The last criteria is the length of paraphrase result. The length of the paraphrase result is generally similar with the original text, not too long or short in difference.
Based on Ramadhani’s article (2019), there are five methods to provide good paraphrase. First, the writer should focus on the main idea or the concept of the source text . This helps the writer understand the purpose that is delivered in the text. Second, the writer can circle some words which have synonyms then change it into different word with same meaning. However, the writer could not merely change the word. When every words is changed with the synonym, it probably can destroy the meaning of the original text. Third, the writers can write the new sentence they have made. Here, the writer could write down the point he gets from the idea he has read. Fourth, the writers should make sure that the sentence they have made is readable and understandable, and importantly, represents the same purpose of the source text. It can be done by asking yourself “can I understand this? Is this really the point I want to show to the reader?“ Fifth, the writers are obligated to provide the source whenever they cite a statement. Paraphrase is still seen as plagiarism when the writer does not provide appropriate source address. The writer should follow the rule of adding a source based on national or international pattern.
In other hand, according to Akbar (2020), the writers should pay attention on some methods to develop appropriate paraphrase. Those strategies can be seen below:
a. Change or rearrange the structure of source text. In paraphrasing, the writer is allowed to replace the words from source passage with suitable synonym. However, changing every words to some synonyms might affect the meaning of the original passage and can be seen as plagiarism. The common way to avoid it, besides replace some word with the synonym, the writer can modify the grammatical structure of the original passage.
b. Reorganize the order of information. When paraphrase a passage, the writer can make new sequence about the information. However, it is not suggested to reorganized information in procedure text.
c. Remove some words. Paraphrasing permits the writer to delete some word, but not decrease the meaning. In this strategy, people often misnamed it as summary. Paraphrasing by deleting some words is similar with summarizing but is not exactly same. Paraphrase tries to present full information in different word structure or synonym. In the other hand, summary provides only the main information and it probably sorter than the previous passage.
d. Modify unclear information. Here, unclear information refers to sentence or passage that contains one or more information that has possibility to cause misunderstanding among
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readers. This strategy enables the writer to simplify the complex language or ambiguity of the original passage.
Additionally, Oshima and Hogue (Hans, 2017), mentioned four simple methods to create good paraphrase result. Those methods are 1) understand the text thoroughly by reading it as much as you need, 2) find some difficult, or ambiguous, or barely used words then replace them with its synonym, 3) make a simple outline which contained the primary and secondary ideas, and 4) arrange the idea using some new vocabularies and different grammatical structure. Not only mentioned the methods, Oshima and Hogue also gave the technique to complete those methods: a) replace some words with synonym, b) change the active sentence into passive when it is possible, and viceversa, and c) decide to write indirect quotation rather than direct quotation.
4. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PARAPHRASING
In academic writing, paraphrasing skill is necessarily mastered by EFL learners. Na and Mai (2017), in their article, stated the reason why paraphrasing is important to be mastered. The first reason is because paraphrasing can prevent the plagiarism issue. By mastering the paraphrasing skill, the writer can be saved from a punishment as a result of doing plagiarism. The second reason is, paraphrasing can show how understand the writer on the text he cites. The other reason is that paraphrasing skill becomes one of indications for writer's integrity and quality in academic writing. Good paraphrasing represents good writing skill the writer has. In addition, paraphrasing can control the desire to make direct quotation too much. When writer quotes too much, it means that he does not have any idea or opinion because he just collects other's idea or theory.
5. CONCLUSION
This conceptual article is made to provide additional insight about paraphrase method as plagiarism avoidance. On previous section of this article, some bad impacts of plagiarism are explained.
Even though paraphrase is not only a way to prevent plagiarism, paraphrase has important role in conducting professional academic writing. Based on some experts, to produce good paraphrase result, the writer is suggested to use synonym, change the word order, and/or rearrange the sentence structure.
Paraphrase shows the quality and integrity of the writer and his writing. A good paraphrase contributes to the development of the knowledge source. Thus, paraphrasing skill should be taught since secondary education to prepare the EFL learners for their academic paper publication as one of graduation requirements in higher education. Furthermore, good paraphrase in academic writing results can increase the value of both the writer and the institution.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ria Fakhrurrina is one of lecturer in State Islamic Institute of Kediri, precisely in English Education Department. She earned her Bachelor Degree from State Islamic Institute of Kediri. Furthermore, she earned her Master Degree from State University of Malang.
Wety Asri Ningsih is a student of English Education Department of State Islamic Institute of Kediri.
She started her study in 2018. She is an English tutor in one of tutoring centers in Kediri. Her research interest are in the areas of teaching and learning, language development, and learning media.
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