Investigating the Plagiarism Awareness among Malaysian undergraduates in Summative Assessment

This preliminary study explored the level of plagiarism awareness among Malaysian undergraduates when carrying out their summative assessment. In the field of language assessment, summative assessment in the form of graded task is regarded as an effective tool to exercise change as it could highly influence the teaching and learning. However, concern regarding students’ plagiarism behaviour is increasing despite the exposure given to them by their respective instructors. Therefore, this study aimed to fill this gap by investigating if there was any relationship between the students’ perceived plagiarism awareness with their Turnitin similarity index score of their summative assessments. The graded task under investigation was in the form of argumentative essay. Using a quantitative approach, student questionnaire and document analysis were utilised to elicit data from 30 undergraduates. It was found that although the students appeared to be aware of plagiarism, their practices in their summative assessment indicated otherwise.