Like many of you, part of my job as an SLW professional is to do faculty development—both in workshops and through individual consultations. Talking with faculty and staff is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. I love learning about what my colleagues are doing in their classes and helping them think through the challenges and opportunities they encounter as they work with L2 writers.

Every once in a while, though, I have an interaction with a faculty member that is…less than pleasant. Two years ago, at a meeting for faculty teaching in our writing-intensive first year seminar program (which we have in lieu of first year composition), I was asked to speak briefly about considerations instructors might want to take into account regarding L2 writers. I offered my usual overview of what we know about L2 writers at Middlebury (based on some internal data gathering), and suggested a few strategies for ensuring success for those writers. Then I waded into a topic I knew would be on many of my colleagues’ minds: plagiarism.

I began by discussing how conceptions of “intellectual ownership” and “textual borrowing” differ across cultures, as a way to stress the importance of offering explicit guidance on what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. Midway through, I was interrupted by an older, male colleague who launched into a bit of a diatribe about moral relativism (including the phrase “take umbrage,” which I can’t recall having heard in informal speech—ever!).

“I can’t believe you’re telling me to excuse cheating on the part of international students, simply because they’re from different cultures!” he said indignantly. “What’s wrong is wrong—that’s why we have an Honor Code!” he added.

I tried to explain that my goal was not to excuse anything, but rather, to explain why some of our students might not be familiar with the cultural assumptions embedded in the idea of plagiarism. But my colleague seemed convinced that I was asking him to excuse unethical behavior under the guise of cultural sensitivity. A number of other colleagues approached me afterward, in private, to tell me that they understood what I was trying to say. They encouraged me not to worry too much about the objections of that one faculty member. However, that incident made me realize that there is a great need for more resources that address the most pertinent and tricky issues that arise for faculty working with L2 writers—particularly with international students whose prior schooling did not take place in the United States.

I was thrilled, therefore, when Raichle Farrelly and Zuzana Tomaš invited me to join them as a coauthor on a volume entitled, Fostering International Student Success in Higher Education (2014), which has just been released from TESOL Press. The volume is written primarily for U.S. instructors (faculty, staff, teaching assistants, etc.) who do not have a background in TESOL, but are looking for pedagogical tools and strategies that facilitate academic success for their international students. The book synthesizes research from applied linguistics and uses that research as the rationale for concrete activities, guidelines, and other teaching resources. We include quotations from instructors and students whom we have interviewed or surveyed in our own research, as well as discussion questions, application activities, and examples for analysis that could be examined by an individual reader or used in a professional development workshop.

While writing is a topic discussed throughout the book, we also touch on other aspects of classroom pedagogy (lecture, discussion, reading, community-building, etc.), as well as on institutional advocacy and student empowerment. We hope that our efforts have produced a text that is relevant to the work of faculty across disciplines, and useful to SLW professionals who are engaged in faculty development on their campuses. (For the Table of Contents and introduction chapter of the book, please visit the TESOL Bookstore.)

Throughout the text, we include “sidebars” that serve as quick reference tools for readers. Below is one such sidebar (see Appendix), entitled “Decreasing Instances of Plagiarism,” which is included in Chapter 4 (Assignments and Assessment). When we talk to faculty about this issue, we make sure to include these sorts of concrete suggestions, but we try also to shed light on the multiple causes for plagiarism—including different conceptions of intellectual ownership and textual borrowing across cultures; lack of high-quality prior instruction on the issue (often the case for both international and U.S. students); and difficulty with reading comprehension, which results in awkward or inappropriate integration of source material into student writing. (For a great discussion problematizing the discourse of ethics when it comes to plagiarism, see Valentine, 2006).

Ultimately, we want our workshop participants to come away with a more nuanced understanding of plagiarism, as well as with concrete steps they can take to decrease the likelihood that it will occur in their classes. We hope this excerpt might prove useful to you and your colleagues as well. Perhaps it will even pique your interest in reading the entire volume! If you do read the book, Raichle, Zuzana, and I would love to hear your feedback—either in a published review or via personal correspondence.

References

Shapiro, S., Farrelly, R., & Tomaš Z. (2014). Fostering international student success in higher education. Alexandria, VA: TESOL International Association.

Valentine, K. (2006). Plagiarism as literacy practice: Recognizing and rethinking ethical binaries. College Composition and Communication, 58(1), 89–109.