Question 3 Plagiarism among students across the universities in Malaysia and in nation has becoming a concerning issue and

a disturbing subject. There are many cases of students opting for plagiarism as to complete their assignments on time and to finish them fast and in an easier way. There are many websites and places that are providing essays and information whereby information can easily be copied and plagiarised and this influence many students in plagiarising their assignment, research paper and projects. Thus day by day, more and more students are involved in this dangerous issue that has been spreading as a disease among the students across the universities in Malaysia and internationally. There are many reasons why students are doing this plagiarism. First, many students do not understand the subject they are learning and they tend to choose an easier way by plagiarising. They are poor in mastering the subject they are learning. Next, there is a lack of exposure to the learning in the universities. Thus, the understanding leads to complication in completing the assignment and difficulties in understand the meanings, theories and the terms. Therefore, students resort to the easier way by copying and pasting answers from elsewhere into their assignments. In addition to that, the poor government law of education system also plays an important role. Even though many universities are talking about the plagiarism and the punishment for those practising it, they are not actually taking it seriously. Some lecturer do not even mind about checking the answers and just take the answers for granted. Furthermore, this issue on plagiarism has not been deeply explained in education system thus majority of the students has no idea about what are the actual consequences of this disturbing act. Another issue why there are so many plagiarism cases going around the universities among the students are because the students are sure that they will fail if they do not plagiarise as they are not able to construct their own ideas and creativity. Another reason is the issue of reading and finding material for the assignments, whereby most students are not keen in reading and studying for actual reason and they tend to be playful. They do not take reading skills seriously; they do not read books and refer to notes. Thus, this will make it hard for them to complete the assignments and at the end they will tend to plagiarise. Some students have this behaviour of procrastinating the assignments and projects given till the last

minute of the submission. At the end, they will resort to plagiarise in order to send the assignment on time. As a conclusion, government need to play an important role in moulding the students to practice the correct skills in completing the assignments and to let them know about the importance of the learning process. They should come up with a stricter rules and regulations in order to help the students to avoid from committing this crime of plagiarism. In addition, it is also important for each student to do self realisation about the crime they are doing so that this issue can be stopped.

References
Batana, T. (2010). Turning to Turnitin to Fight Plagiarism among University Students. Retrieved June 20, 2012, from http://www.ifets.info/journals/13_2/1.pdf Martin, B. (1992, August 3). Plagiarism by university students: the problem and some proposals. Retrieved June 21, 2012, from Brian Martin's Website: http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/92tert.html Sharma, B. K. (2007). Plagiarism among University Students: Intentional or Accidental? Journal of NELTA , 134-141.