Electronic Theses and Dissertation

This qualitative research aims to find out the post-graduate students’ perceptions on plagiarism, the factors influencing the post-graduate students to plagiarize in their academic writing, and the strategies used by the post-graduate students in avoiding plagiarism in writing thesis. to collect the data, 10 post-graduate students of graduate study of english education at syiah kuala university were chosen randomly regarding the predetermined criteria, that is, the students in the academic years of 2016 and 2017 who have written their thesis. the data were collected through interview. the result of data analysis shows that the post-graduate students of english education at syiah kuala university have the same perception about the issue of plagiarism in thesis writing. the students agreed that plagiarism refers to cheating other’s ideas or works without mentioning the sources and acknowledging it as someone else’s creation. the students claimed that plagiarism refers to forbidden action or criminal and it happened because of some factors. the factors contributed to plagiarism are limited time, chasing the deadline, technological development and ease of accessing online sources, students' laziness, lack of understanding to paraphrase, and poor understanding of plagiarism. furthermore, there are two main strategies which can be used to avoid plagiarism in thesis writing. the first is paraphrasing and quoting other peoples' ideas. the second is reading a lot of sources for the writing from many articles and journals to learn how the authors develop their ideas in their writing and how to put citations and references appropriately.