WRITING WITHOUT PLAGIARISM: DEVELOPING SKILLS TO WRITE BETTER

Oladunjoye Oluwayomi Sefiu Ayanfe
Assoc. Prof. Dr., English Language Education & Director Centre for Continuing Education
Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria, email: yomidunjoye@oouagoiwoye.edu.ng

Abstract

This paper investigated the writing level of part time post graduate students as part of a pilot work to test the effect of independent study on academic writing. The focus was writing without plagiarism. The participants were adults between the ages of 25 and 50 all of whom were gainfully employed in diverse educational positions and from different cultures across the country. The same pre and post test was conducted to establish participants’ ability to write without plagiarism before and after the treatment. They were to write their own versions of a two - paragraph extract of a journal article. All the 37 participants constituted the experimental group. Findings show that 31 out of the respondents improved radically in the post test. It was recommended that researchers could write better if exposed to what others write, guided on developing specific and personalized style and taught the danger of plagiarism and it is damnable consequences.

Keywords: writing, plagiarism, grammar, skills, teaching