THE STRATEGIES USED BY POST-GRADUATE STUDENTS TO AVOID PLAGIARISM IN THESIS WRITING

This study aims to find out the perception of post-graduate students on plagiarism, the influenced factors, and the strategies used by the students to avoid plagiarism in thesis writing. To collect the data, 10 postgraduate students of Graduate Study of English Education at University of Syiah Kuala (USK) were chosen randomly based on the predetermined criteria: the students in the academic year 2016 and 2017 who have written their thesis. The data were collected through interviews. The result of data analysis shows that the post-graduate students of English Education at USK have the same perception about the issue of plagiarism in thesis writing. The factors contributing to plagiarism are limited time, the deadline, technological development and ease of accessing online sources, students' laziness, lack of understanding to paraphrase, and poor understanding of plagiarism. Furthermore, two main strategies 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 from many articles and journals to learn how the authors develop their idea in their writing and how to put citations and references appropriately.


INTRODUCTION
Plagiarism, according to the American Association of University Professors, is defined as "taking over the ideas, methods, or written words of another, without acknowledgement and with the intent that they are taken as the work of the deceiver." This means that plagiarism is defined as copying someone else's work without mentioning the sources. The above description is comparable to the definition of plagiarism by Khairunnisak (2018) and Snow (2006) who described plagiarism as the act of copying someone else's ideas and creations without acknowledging the source and passing them as his own. Plagiarism in writing refers to using someone else' idea or work in one's writing without citing sources and claiming it as one's own.
There are a lot of cases of plagiarism that occurred in Indonesia, which is not only done by students but also by lecturers. For instance, a lecturer from a respectable university in Bandung, an alumni of a wellknown university in Yogyakarta, and a professor from a private university in Bandung, which has been reported in the newspaper and on the television programmes nationwide (BBC Indonesia, 28 September 2017;Detiknews, 2 March 2012, andMerdeka.com, 17 Feb 2014). These facts show how dangerous plagiarism is to fulfill academic requirements.
To overcome the issues of plagiarism, the Indonesian Director General of Higher Education Ministry together with the rectors of state universities and private universities coordinators in Indonesia declared the act of anti-plagiarism on the 4th May 2011. This declaration underlines the importance of fighting plagiarism in the academic world and determines what kinds of actions should be done to minimize the act of plagiarism. The Indonesian Government has tightened its regulation and done the extensive works on lecturers' written works, particularly research articles published in local, national, and international journals that are used to apply for academic positions. Therefore, alerting Indonesian students on the importance of plagiarism and how to implement their understanding of plagiarism not on their written works would be crucial.
Despite plagiarism cases that commonly emerged in Indonesia, there is a limited number of research dealing with plagiarism. Most of them still focus on observing the number of plagiarism cases and students' responses on whether or not the use of references and citation is important in their writing. Therefore, alerting Indonesian students on the importance of plagiarism and how to implement their understanding on plagiarism is necessary.
Many studies related to plagiarism have been done such as by Razera (2011) Anney and Mosha (2015), Agustina and Raharjo (2017), and Hayati (2020). Based on their studies, it can be concluded that there are several factors influencing the students to plagiarize such as limited time to work on an assignment, meeting deadlines, shortage of books, student's laziness, technological development, poor academic writing skills, easy to access online sources, and poor understanding of plagiarism. The other factor is the issue of plagiarism was not entirely clear both for students and teachers. Even though plagiarism was a common issue, there were some differences on what is allowed and not allowed in terms of text plagiarism. Furthermore, the findings of the study revealed that there are three strategies that students used to avoid plagiarism: paraphrasing and quoting others' ideas, understanding the meaning of plagiarism, and using the lectures' particular method.
This notion leads the researcher to explore the issue regarding avoiding plagiarism in writing thesis at USK. The researcher was curious to investigate the strategies used by the post-graduate students to avoid plagiarism in writing a thesis and the problems faced by the postgraduate students in avoiding plagiarism. However, this research is different from the previous ones in term of the location of the study and the participant. This research focuses on the issue of plagiarism and the post-graduate students of USK was chosen as the participants.

Vocabulary application
Vocabulary application is one of the plagiarism checkers to identify the same application or quantity of vocabulary of a text by comparing it with the previous text. The same application or the quantity of vocabulary indicates plagiarism in the text. On the contrary, if there is a difference between previous text and present text in the case of vocabulary quantity and the application, the text may not be detected as plagiarism. This is one of the factors that make it easier to identify the students' writing.

Vocabulary transformation
A student may plagiarize a text by transforming the vocabulary in a text. A text may be detected as a result of plagiarism when the vocabulary is transformed by using a synonym of vocabularies from the text. The students considered did the plagiarism if there was a change of vocabulary when comparing the text. This is one of the easiest factors to identify plagiarism.

Confusing text
Using inappropriate vocabulary and context in a text may indicate that a text is plagiarized from a source. Several parts of the text look confusing because the writer copied and pasted from the original one. Moreover, plagiarism in a written text that can be identified through the coherence, cohesiveness, and consistency of a text. So that, to avoid confusing text, the students must read the source carefully before paraphrasing it.

The application of punctuation
This factor often occurs when someone did accidental plagiarism. Plagiarism would be detected when the plagiarist used the same punctuation as the original one.

The same spelling error and word frequency
The similarity of a spelling error in two texts looks unnatural. The same spelling error in the written text could help to detect plagiarism without using plagiarism detection software. The person who identifies the text must be thorough. Then, if two texts have the same word frequency, it also could be indicated as plagiarism.

Factors Leading Students to Plagiarize
Plagiarism is one of the popular topics in the education world, especially among students nowadays. Plagiarism could happen because of the students' interest in learning, reading, and lack of vocabulary. Dias and Bastos (2014) claimed that the easiness in accessing the internet content increased the phenomenon of plagiarism. These common behaviors often occur when the students do their assignments. They copy most of the peoples' writing on the internet without putting the reference, and the teachers also have no plagiarism detection software to detect the students' work. Appiah (2016) revealed that the reasons for students' plagiarism were lack of writing skills, getting good scores, lack of understanding of plagiarism, the cost of quality learning material, pressure from students' family, and the help from their friend.
The five major factors why plagiarism is committed are; gains inefficiency, lack of understanding, temptation and opportunity, time management and lack of deterrence policies (Silfiani, Aziz, & Daud, 2018). Another factor that plays a role in the causes of plagiarism is discipline. A study by Evering and Moorman (2012) proved that students' laziness contributed to the plagiarism issue. Students did not do an effort to write their task by using their own words. They just simplified doing the task by copying and pasting the text from other sources into their task without paraphrasing, citing, and referencing.

Strategies to Avoid Plagiarism
Some existing studies revealed various strategies to avoid the plagiarism. Novanta (2009) said that there are two techniques to solve this plagiarism, namely prevention and detection. Sibomana, Ndayambaje, and Uwambaynema (2018) mentioned three strategies to avoid plagiarism in their research: tightening the reading and academic writing abilities, institutionalizing, and propagating of anti-plagiarism policy, and using plagiarism checker software. Kokkinaki et al. (2015) stated that the use of software for the detection of plagiarism willcontribute positively to reduce plagiarism. Furthermore, Orim (2014) suggests the plagiarism issue should be integrated into education curriculum. It is in line with the finding by Ramadhan (2017) who found that participants in his research suggested that the the plagiarism should be taught right from primary to university level. In addition, the function of the supervisor is critical in detecting plagiarism.
The strategies used by post-graduate students to avoid plagiarism in thesis writing (E. P. Andayani, S. S. Fitriani & D. Fitrisia)

Research Design
This study used a qualitative method. "Qualitative research is a means for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem" (Cresswell, 2014, p.4). The function of qualitative research is to discover underlying desires using in-depth interviews. The writers want to know the students' perception of plagiarism and the strategy to avoid plagiarism in writing their thesis.
This study used the case study design, "the case study design is more likely to investigate narrowly defined topic areas such as classroom problems or language development" (Griffee, 2012, p.96). This method is used to narrow down a broad field of research into a researchable topic. Griffe (2012) explained that the case study has three important things, one of them is to examine something in a real-life context. Therefore, the writers chose this approach because it is appropriate for this research.

Research Subject and Object
According to Sugiyono (2007), the total number of subjects in a qualitative study is not determined as long as the researcher could find enough information from the subject. The subjects of this study are 10 of 14 students who were chosen randomly from post-graduate program at USK in the academic year 2016 and 2017 who have written their thesis. Meanwhile, the object of this study is the issue of plagiarism in thesis writing among the post-graduate students of USK. In this case, the researchers focused on the perception about plagiarism and the students' strategies in avoiding plagiarism.

Research Instrument
To collect the data, the researcher used an interview guide as the instrument. According to Griffee (2012, p.159), "An interview has structure, purpose, and form, and can be defined (usually) as a personto-person structured conversation to find or create meaningful data which has to be collected, analyzed, and validated". In this research, the researcher chooses a semi-structured interview to get the information to answer the research questions. The researcher formulates nine questions about plagiarism (see Appendix 1) which are modified from Hayati (2020).

Techniques of Data Collection
To collect the data, every participant was interviewed for about 10-15 minutes. The interview was about the students' perception of plagiarism, the factors of doing plagiarism and the strategy to avoid plagiarism. The researcher used the interview guide to make sure that the interview run based on the context. The interview process was recorded using a handphone to avoid missing important information.

Techniques of Data Analysis
To analyze the data from the interview, the researcher transcribed them into a written form. The students' relevant statements to the focus of this research were written in sentences and categorized based on the relevant theory. In doing this, the data from the interview were analyzed by using Miles, Huberman and Saldana's qualitative research method. Miles, Huberman and Saldana (2014) propose several components of data analysis in qualitative research as follow.

Data Condensation
Data condensation refers to the process of selecting, focusing, simplifying, abstracting, and transforming the data that appear in writtenup field notes or transcriptions (Miles, Huberman and Saldana, 2014). It refers to the process of collecting the mass information data that may obtain by the writers during the study from the interview, field notes, and documentation which can be reduced and organized.

Data Display
Data display refers to an organized and compressed assembly of information that permits conclusion drawing (Miles, Huberman & Saldana, 2014). The data display can be drawn in the form of tables, charts, networks, and other graphical formats. In this research, the writers display the data in the form of descriptive text that focuses on plagiarism and their strategies to avoid plagiarism from the interview script.

Verification and Conclusion
The verification and conclusion are the two stages where the analysis of research allows the researcher to verify and develop a conclusion regarding the findings of the research. In this study, the conclusion about the students' perception toward plagiarism, the factors of doing plagiarism, and the strategies to avoid plagiarism are derived The strategies used by post-graduate students to avoid plagiarism in thesis writing (E. P. Andayani, S. S. Fitriani & D. Fitrisia) 584 based on the data display analyses and the discussion on the previous stage.

Post-Graduate Students' Perception of Plagiarism
The result revealed that most of the students have the same perception of plagiarism. They agreed that plagiarism is taking others' ideas or work without acknowledging the source or references. Student A and Student F claimed that plagiarism is cheating others' ideas or work and acknowledged it as someone else's idea. They claimed plagiarism as a criminal. Student A said "Plagiarism refers to cheating others' works. It is a criminal activity for stealing others' copy right." Similarly, the resume of the Student D' statement was as follow: "Plagiarism refers to cheating others' work, idea or theory without mentioning the real author or owner and someone else claims it as his or her work or idea. It is a forbidden activity. Especially in academic writing, the writer should acknowledge the real author and put it as a reference. Plagiarism should be avoided so that we should put references for every idea we got from others." Meanwhile, Student G said that plagiarism usually occurs in academic writing. Someone writes academic writing based on what he or she read and takes the idea without mentioning the source of the idea or theory. "Plagiarism often happens in academic writing, especially in writing thesis or journal in which the students write ideas from their reading sources without mentioning the real authors of the theory or idea. It should be avoided by everyone. It refers to cheating and it seems that the people who plagiarize do not respect others' works… I did not commit plagiarism in my thesis writing because I put the sources at the references." The post-graduate students' statements about plagiarism shows that all of the students agreed that plagiarism refers to cheating others' work or idea without acknowledging the sources and claims it as his or their own work or idea. The students' perception of plagiarism can be resumed as follows. claiming someone else's ideas as his or her work 4. cheating others' work, idea or theory without mentioning the real author or owner

The Factors Influencing the Post-Graduate Students to Plagiarize in Thesis Writing
The students also gave information about the factors that influence them to do plagiarism in writing. Student (C) said that someone commits plagiarism because he or she is lacking knowledge and does not read enough references. Further the student said that "Plagiarism happens due to several factors such as lack of knowledge and reads limited books. Thus, the writers do not know what to write. As a result, they take others' ideas or theories and claim them as their own." Meanwhile, student G perceived a lack of knowledge about plagiarism as one of the factors of committing plagiarism. It is resumed from the following statement. "From my point of view, it could take place because there are many students who do not know exactly what plagiarism is. For that reason, they tend to think "Maybe it is safe to do plagiarism because it is not too much." In similar tones, student B agreed that some people plagiarize unconsciously because he or she read a source and rewrite the idea into his or her writing without mentioning the source of the idea because he or she regards the idea as his or her own idea. "People may commit plagiarism unconsciously. They rewrite an idea that they get from many resources for long period and then one day they claim that they construct the theory by themselves or unconsciously claim the knowledge they get from many resources as their own theory." Furthermore, student A said that people tend to commit plagiarism when she or he has limited time and deadline. Student A stated: "Usually students tended to commit plagiarism because he or she does not have enough time to read many sources. The students searched the idea from the internet and copied and pasted without doing paraphrase and making a citation." Meanwhile, student D claimed that students tend to plagiarize because they lack in knowledge about academic writing. The students do not know how to develop and arrange an idea into a good writing The strategies used by post-graduate students to avoid plagiarism in thesis writing (E. P. Andayani, S. S. Fitriani & D. Fitrisia) 586 structure. As a result, the students choose to find the idea from internet and acknowledge it as their own work.

No
Factors influencing students to commit plagiarism 1.
lack of knowledge and reading limited books.
Limited time (chased by deadline)

The Strategies Used by the Students to Avoid Plagiarism in Thesis Writing
There are various strategies used by the students to avoid plagiarism. The students (J) and (H) found several quotes from the sources where they can take the ideas, but they have to paraphrase it to avoid plagiarism. Student B said that "If we find the interesting ideas from other sources, we have to paraphrase it by using our own words and put the reference of the source." Furthermore, student B said that the students should know how to cite and resume the sources from the internet. It is implied from the following statement: "We can avoid plagiarism by learning how to paraphrase and cite the source properly. Many students are detected doing plagiarism even though they have written the source by putting the citation and references. It happened because they do not write the citation and references appropriately." Meanwhile, student C said that the students do plagiarism as a result of having limited sources about the subject. Hence, the students are suggested to read a lot of sources from books, journals, articles, news, and others to support the writers' basic knowledge about his or her own writing. It can be concluded from the following statement: "Paraphrasing is one of the ways to avoid plagiarism. Students should have enough information and theory to support his or her idea in writing the thesis. He or she needs to read a theory or an opinion and write it in his or her own words. Students also suggested learning how to put references or footnote for the scientific theory in order to avoid plagiarism." The above statement is also supported by the idea of the student G who asserted that students should read a lot of articles and journal because there are a lot of examples of how the writer develops the similar idea into various writing styles. Rewrite the sources by using students' own language 2.
Reading a lot of sources such as articles, books and journal 3.
Learning how to paraphrase 4.
Limited time (chased by deadline)

DISCUSSION
In this section, there are three major points are elaborated. The first is about the post-graduate students' perception of plagiarism. The second is about the factors influencing students to commit plagiarism. The third is about the strategies used by the post-graduate students to avoid plagiarism.
Based on the result of the interview, it was found that the students have a similar perception of committing plagiarism in thesis writing. The students perceived plagiarism as citing others' works and acknowledge it as others' work. They agreed that plagiarism is a forbidden action to do in thesis writing. The students also claimed that plagiarism is a criminal because someone stole or took peoples' ideas without putting any references.
Based on the students' perception of plagiarism, it was found that many students perceived plagiarism as a problem and academic issue. The students claimed plagiarism as stealing or cheating others' work or idea as in a previous study by Henderson, Whitelaw and Jose (2014). Consequently, plagiarism was viewed as an act of cheating or stealing. This was also supported by the research done by Hayes et al. (2005). The participants expressed that plagiarism was a serious issue and the students should come together to avoid. It is also in line with the theory suggested by Henderson et al. (2014) where the act of plagiarism was perceived largely as an act of copying without acknowledging the original source. Some also saw referencing as a mechanism against plagiarism. Overall, the participants perceived plagiarism as an illegal act of failing to acknowledge the work done by others and presenting such work as one's own. Students are supposed to be taught the conventions of plagiarism so that they understand the term well, rather than feeling unsure about the meaning. There should be a fixed stated definition that explains all issues, starting with the causes, forms, mitigations and consequences of plagiarism.
There are several factors that influence the post-graduate students to commit plagiarism. The first factor is limited time and meeting The strategies used by post-graduate students to avoid plagiarism in thesis writing (E. P. Andayani, S. S. Fitriani & D. Fitrisia) 588 deadlines. Students who have a lot of assignments and deadlines will try to find a quick way to fulfil the assignment in injury time. Eret and Gokmenogh (2010) stated that the factors affecting student's plagiarism are having to use foreign languages in research work. Consequently, time constraints, the lack of knowledge on plagiarism, heavy course obligations, assignments, lack of understanding of the assignment, and lack of vital academic skills influence the students to do plagiarism.
The second factor refers to the technological development and ease of accessing online sources. Students who find the source of writing from the internet tend to press keynote copy and paste to move the source of theory to their writing page. They found it as an easy way to find many sources without need to make a summary by using handwriting.
The third factor refers to the students' laziness. Students who have less attention to their academic achievement do not pay attention on how to take the theory from many sources. They do not want to make any references and sources because it helps them to fulfil the assignment quickly without the need to read a lot of sources.
The fourth factor refers to the lack of understanding about how to paraphrase and make citations. Some students perceived that their duty is just finding the interesting writing and copy-paste it into their academic writing. They did not know how to change it by using their own words and language.
The fifth is refers to the poor understanding of plagiarism. Some students perceive that plagiarism is only referred to as writing the sources of information. However, they have less attention about how to write the references and sources appropriately.
The factors mentioned above revealed that plagiarism was committed by the students because of personal reasons, such as a lack of time, the lack of knowledge about how to avoid plagiarism and students' laziness. It supported the previous finding of plagiarism by Moore (2014) who found that laziness has contributed to plagiarism. It is also in line with the previous finding by Ramadhan (2017) who found that one of the factors that contributed to plagiarism internal factors such as students' ignorance, laziness, too much work, language problems. The factors mentioned above by the participants are related to one another. Even though plagiarism was perceived as a forbidden action, doing plagiarism has seemed like a common action. This phenomenon is affected by technology and unlimited access to the internet which make the students cheat any resources from the internet easily to complete their assignment. Actually, this phenomenon is already described by Muluk, Habiburrahim and Safrul (2015) in his citation that "Today, learners can freely read thousands of books, articles, documents and other significant reports online. They can also watch their favourite movies simple by typing a keyword in the Google, Yahoo! or MSN search engine site" (Habiburrahim et al., 2015, p. 6). It was unarguable how easy the internet to be accessed by people, especially students right now. It did not indisputable that the use of the internet or online sources is misused.
Furthermore, based on the responses given by participants, three main strategies can be used to avoid plagiarism in an academic writing class. The first is paraphrasing and quoting other peoples' idea. The second is reading a lot of sources for the writing from many articles and journals to learn how the authors develop their idea in their writing and how to put citations and references appropriately.
Moreover, the strategies used by the students in this research is in line with the previous research finding by Hayati (2020) who found that there are several strategies used by the students to avoid plagiarism such as paraphrasing and quoting other peoples' ideas, understanding the meaning of plagiarism and using the lecturers' particular method.
The first way to avoid plagiarism was by paraphrasing or quoting peoples' idea. "Paraphrase is very significant for the students to expand their writing skill" (Rahmayani, 2018). According to the participants, students have to read a theory or an opinion. Then conclude what they have read and written by their words. They also added, do not forget to put the reference because it was a significant thing in paraphrasing or quoting peoples' work.
Nevertheless, understanding of quoting and paraphrasing should be taught by lecturers. After that, understanding the meaning of plagiarism itself was the main point, and it was important. The participants said that the students should know the meaning of plagiarism, which one is considered plagiarism in order to understand what they need to do to avoid plagiarism in completing their writing. Then, read a lot and use the lecturers' particular method. Every lecturer has a way of delivering knowledge to their students. Therefore, the role of the lecturer is essential to enhance the behaviour and comprehension of the students towards the writing approach (Fhonna, 2014). She also stated that to achieve the need for an effective teaching-learning process, all variables such as learners and lecturers need to help each other to establish a supportive learning environment for teaching. If the method was suitable for the student, the student could use it to help them to avoid plagiarism.
From the discussion above, the writer concluded that all of the participants did not agree with the existence of plagiarism and has the same perceptions even though they still used it due to some factors which required them to do it. The factors required them to plagiarize were limited time and meeting deadline, technological development and ease of accessing the online sources, students' laziness, lack of understanding to paraphrase and poor understanding of plagiarism. Meanwhile, the strategies given by participants of this study such as paraphrasing and quoting peoples' ideas, understanding the meaning of plagiarism and using the lecturers' particular method were expected to be useful for students in their academic writing.
The finding of this research revealed that the issue of plagiarism is very important for higher education levels. Students in high academic admitted that the above factors may lead them to plagiarize. Thus, in academic language teaching, the students' ability to make a summary, paraphrase, and references or citations are necessarily needed to be developed.
The above explanation brings the idea that in ELT, providing materials about plagiarism is necessarily needed. The material about plagiarism and the strategies to avoid plagiarism should be included in curriculum since the primary level so that the student is trained to develop their own idea in every single academic writing task as proposed by Ramadhan (2017).

Conclusion
Based on the interview result, it was found that the post-graduate students of English Education at USK have the same perception about the issue of plagiarism in thesis writing. The students agreed that plagiarism is referred to cheating other's idea or works without mentioning and acknowledging the sources as someone else's work. The students also agreed that plagiarism is a forbidden action that consider as criminals and it occurred because of several factors. The factors are limited time and chasing by the deadline to submit the writing task, technological development, and ease of accessing online sources, students' laziness, lack of understanding to paraphrase, and poor understanding of plagiarism.
The last, there are two main strategies that can be used to avoid plagiarism in a thesis writing. The first is paraphrasing and quoting other peoples' idea. The second is reading a lot of sources from many articles and journals to learn how the authors develop their idea in their writing and how to put citations and references appropriately.

Suggestions
Based on the finding of this research, the researcher gave some suggestions for students, teachers, and other researchers. For the students, they should be aware of the plagiarism issue in order to avoid doing plagiarism in their academic work. Thus, the students are suggested to pay attention to how do plagiarism happens and how to avoid it. The researcher also suggested the student to read a lot of sources during writing their thesis to limit the possibility of doing plagiarism in their final academic work.
For other researchers, it is recommended to do similar research about plagiarism in academic writing. The findings of this research are expected to be a starting point for further research in the same field. The researcher also suggested other researchers to conduct more specific research about plagiarism such as the analysis of the students' academic work to find out the plagiarism cases.