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I can see plagiarism both as a behavior and a tendency. Plagiarism- a deed- can
                                                                      be viewed
 as a writer's bad intentions or a failure of a novice writer. Either
case manifests individually. But plagiarism can be a tendency if it is an
effect of certain socio-cultural contexts. Being a predisposition, it can
enhance the first plagiarizers and impede the second. Plagiarism that is
propped by a socio-cultural context seems to be the gravest case owing to the
lasting period of time through which it was developed, because of the scope of
its manifestation, and due to varying forms. It is the gravest case because it
is connected with a degree of independent thinking acceptable in a society.

Plagiarism of a novice writer that can take, probably, some merging forms of
inappropriate and abundant citing together with inaccurate paraphrase can be
cured through teaching the writing skill and developing the teacher's and
students' attitude to it as something unacceptable. These teachers' efforts
can bear fruit in a socio-cultural context where individual creative thinking
is valued. Still, if there are problems with plagiarizers, these problems are
discussed. If teachers are fighting with plagiarism in the socio-cultural
contexts that did not or do not stimulate individual creative thinking, they
can only hope that students' personality will lead away from stealing ideas and
reiterating after others. So, in favorable for plagiarism situations, teaching
the writing skill should be combined with raising the novice writers' dignity
and faith that their experience is unique and interesting to the others.

If a tendency to plagiarism is observed in writing the native language, it
magnifies in writing a foreign one. A kind of interference of the native
language writing experience, this "common" or "native" plagiarism aggravates
because of the constrains of FL forms and, I do not discard, lack of
attachment to a foreign culture. Probably, these reasons are in a different
proportion with the beginners in writing FL and those who are much more
advanced.

I would like to know whether someone has experienced such cases, and
how this, let me call it a cultural tendency to plagiarism, should be treated -
as a cultural phenomenon or a lasting writing failure? How much can EFL
teaching contribute to recovery if it is a disease?

Thanks. Tanya Mironova.
(Doctorate researcher. Dnipropetrovsk State University. Ukraine)
mirtanya@mail.Dnepr.net

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