ELT Students’ Attitudes toward the Effectiveness of the Anti-Plagiarism Software, Turnitin

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doi: 10.14744/alrj.2019.66376ALR Journal 2019;3(5):63–75
Applied Linguistics Research Journal
ELT Students’ Attitudes toward the Eectiveness of
the Anti-Plagiarism Software, Turnitin
Original Research
1. Introduction
ABSTRACT
Students assessment is one of the essential components of education
to evaluate the eectiveness of a program and decision makings. Anti-
plagiarism software packages are widely used in many universities and
institutions to assess students` performance in their assignments and
papers and to give them feedback. This study attempted to investigate
students` background and familiarity regarding the concept and kinds
of plagiarism, their reasons for plagiarizing, suggestions for avoiding it,
and their attitudes toward eectiveness of the anti-plagiarism software
Turnitin. Using survey and open-ended questions, followed up by
interview, in this study we analyzed collected data from 42 university
students in the department of English Language Teaching (ELT) in North
Cyprus. This study triangulated data collection tools by using surveys
and interviews, also the data were analyzed with SPSS 21.0. The results
of survey revealed the students` familiarity with the concept and kinds
of plagiarism and their reasons for plagiarizing, open-ended questions
concerned with ways of avoiding plagiarism, their attitude toward
eectiveness of the anti-plagiarism software, specically Turnitin and
their previous formal studies about plagiarism. In additions, the interview
focused on conrmation of survey and open-ended questions as well as
the extent of intentionality of plagiarizing and their extra suggestion..
Keywords: : ELT; Anti-plagiarism software; Turnitin.
Corresponding Author: Momen
Yaseen M Amin
Phone: +96- 477-01210789
e-mail: momen.amin@uhd.edu.iq
Article citation: Amin, M. Y. M. &
Mohammadkarimi, E. (2019). ELT
Students’ attitudes toward the
eectiveness the anti-plagiarism
software, Turniti, Applied Linguisics
Research Journal, 3(5): 63–75.
Receved Date: June 1, 2019
Accepted Date: July 28, 2019
Onlne Date: November 5, 2019
Publsher: Kare Publshng
© 2018 Appled Lngustcs Research Journal
E-ISSN: 2651-2629
1Department of Foreign
Language Education, Eastern
Mediterranean University,
Famagusta, Cyprus
2 Department of English,
University of Human
Development, Iraq
Ebrahim
Mohammadkarimi,1
Momen Yaseen M Amin,2
The crucial aim of education is improving students` knowledge,
but there are many barriers in this way. Plagiarism as one of these
barriers is a concern of education, especially since the last two
decades. Growth of technology and availability of information has
made plagiarism easier than ever. According to Youmans (2011),
“Widespread access to the internet and other electronic media
has served as something of a double-edged sword with respect
to plagiarism” (p. 750). To deter students against this unethical
issue, academic community has used dierent anti-plagiarism
softwares, among them is the recent and famous plagiarism
checker Turnitin.
Plagiarism
The concept of plagiarism has been dened dierently through
literature. Plagiarism is dened by Park (2003) as literary stealing
words or ideas of others and using it in one’s own work without

64 Mohammadkarimi et al.
giving reference. According to Larkham and Manns (2002), most of the academic institutions
consider plagiarism as kind of cheating. Moreover, although there is a consensus in academic eld
that plagiarism is an academic dishonesty, but again there is not any positive attitude in motivating
researchers to follow plagiarism and it remains prohibited worldwide. One reason for considering
plagiarism as an issue in academic eld can be that students mostly misunderstand it(Scanlon,
2007). In the last two decades, there have been many studies on this area (Sims, 2002; Kenny, 2007;
Stapleton, 2012; Pecorari & Petrić, 2014; Akçapınar, 2015). The concept of plagiarism for students
of Asian countries diers from European students (Gerding, 2012). While European students see
copying others` work as honor, in Asian culture, students thought altering original work is a kind
of disrespect to author (Stowers & Hummel, 2011). This issue may make the concept of plagiarism
more complicated. Plagiarism can be copying whole work (Braumoeller & Gaines, 2001), some
important portions of someone or even paraphrasing it without quotations or giving references
(Warn, 2006). Braumoeller and Gaines (2001) mentioned that even though the original source is
cited in copied or paraphrased pieces of work, inappropriate citation leads to considering it as
plagiarism.
Intentional and unintentional plagiarism
Although many people consider plagiarism as kind of academic cheating, intention of writers or
students is not always clear. Plagiarism can be textual, which is unintentional copying or prototypical
in which student or writer intents to deceive (Pecorari, 2003). In prototypical, the intention is clear,
but in textual many causes may constitute plagiarism such as carelessness in writing reference,
quotation mark, and page number, while the original author is cited. Moreover, if paraphrase is
too close to the origin it may be considered as textual plagiarism (Stapleton, 2012). In her study,
Shi (2004) identied categories and sub-categories of contextual plagiarism. According to her
there are three levels; rst without reference, second with reference and last with quotation. First
and second categories have three sub-categories, which are exact copy of original work, slightly
modied by deleting or adding some words and paraphrasing close to the original work.
Anti-Plagiarism Software
One prevalent way of preventing writers and students from plagiarism is the plagiarism checker
or anti-plagiarism software. When a certain work is uploaded, the software after quick whirling
in its database which includes e-books, journals, magazines, online documents and students`
papers, shows matching and plagiarized parts and its percentage (Paulson, 2002). The software
helps journals and institutions in detecting writers and students’ plagiarism, instead of manually
searching in millions of documents. Moreover, with providing feedback, it can deter students from
future plagiarism and at the same time improves their writings. There are dierent anti-plagiarism
softwares with various abilities and defectiveness such as Turnitin, Safe Assign, Digital books Web
browsers, Plagiarism Detect.com, Viper, EduTie, PlagiServe, iThenticate, and WCopynd (Ali, 2013).
Turnitin
Turnitin is one of the famous and prevalent anti-plagiarism software in faculty, which claims
to be trusted by 15,000 Institutions in 135 countries and 30 million students (Turnitin, 2017). The
Turnitin software detects matches between the uploaded paper and the content of its database
Turnitin (2017) claims that, in a very short time period, institutions will be provided with a
completely dierentiated learning experience which can raise students’ outcomes and 77% of
students conrmed their improvement in writing by feedback studio. In line with this claim, Rolfe
(2011) in his work found that students` use of Turnitin had signicant impact on their writing.
Moreover, originality report of students work by Turnitin may help them learn about ethical issue
about dishonesty (Zeman, Steen, & Zeman, 2011). In addition, teachers growingly adopt Turnitin
for online grading, in order to provide more signicant feedbacks, enhance their learning process,
and save their own time (Turnitin, 2017).
However, there is criticism on anti-plagiarism services, specically on Turnitin. One of the

Applied Linguistics Research Journal, 2019, 3 (5), 63–75 65
important criticism on Turnitin is the issue of keeping students` previously submitted work without
their consent and matching them with newly submitted work for making money (Doland, 2006).
Jones and Moore (2010) point out that Turnitin in some ways (e.g. replacing the letter “I” with
number “1”, which are the same in Times New Roman font, expected font of submissions) could
be deceived, and disabled from detecting the similarities. Moreover, Turnitin cannot distinguish
whether matching words are within quotation marks or not (Warn, 2006; Amin, 2017).
Previous studies considering plagiarism show that there is not enough research in Asian counties
(Rezanejad & Rezaei, 2013). In addition, majority of these studies were in the eld of medical science
rather than social science (Macnab & Thomas, 2007; Sikes, 2009; as cited in Ahmadi, 2014) and only
few studies(Mu, 2010; Rezanejad & Rezaei, 2013; Ahmadi, 2014) have been done in the eld of ELT.
In a recent study, Nemati (2016) who investigated the perception of students from dierent majors
in Iran found out that low level of English and insucient training regarding plagiarism is students`
reason for plagiarizing. In contrast, in a study of exploring students` reasons for plagiarizing by
Ahmadi (2014), results revealed that students did not show a negative feelings and attitude about
plagiarizing. Following the literature, this study seeks to answer the following research questions:
1.Which predetermined denition of plagiarism is more preferable for ELT students?
2.To what extent are ELT students familiar with plagiarism?
3.What are the reasons behind ELT students’ plagiarism?
4.How can instructors help the ELT students avoid plagiarism?
2.Method
2.1.Partcpants
In total, 42 university students in the department of English Language Teaching (ELT) in North
Cyprus (12 PhD, 15 Masters and 15 BA students) were participants of this study. Availability sampling
(convenient technique in particular) was used for selecting the participants. According to Farhady
(2008), in availability sampling, participants are selected based on their availability and willing to
participate in the research. As Table 1 shows, ther age ranged from 20 to 45, and they were from
varous countres, mostly North Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, and a number of Arabc and Afrcan countres.
In each semester, ELT students, based on ther degrees, are requred to do varous projects, whch
oblgate them to wrte and submte those projects as soft copy or hard copy.
Table 1. Participants demographic information
Level Number Age gender
PhD Students 12 26- 45 (average 29.7) 10 Females-2 males
MA Students 15 23- 33 (average 26.2) 8 Females- 7 males
BA Students 15 19-28 (average 21.2) 13 Females- 2 males
2.2.Instruments
This study triangulated data collection tools by using surveys and interviews. Triangulation
is “the use of two or more methods of data collection in the study of some aspect of human
behaviour’ (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007, p.141) and helps to strengthen the validity of data
(Briggs, Morrison, & Coleman, 2012).
The survey adopted from an article by Rezanejad and Rezaei (2013) in which they explored
students’ perception and attitudes toward plagiarism. We revised some parts of the survey and
added some open-ended questions, followed by a pilot study of the survey, apart from the focal
participants (Appendix 1). To ensure its reliability and validity, the researchers modied some

66 Mohammadkarimi et al.
parts based on results of the pilot study and the nal survey consisted of 24 questions in three
parts. The rst part was concerned with familiarity of students with the concept of plagiarism and
included six questions. The next six questions contained items to investigate the perceptions of
students toward plagiarism. And in the last part of the questionnaire, 12 questions were designed
to understand the reasons behind plagiarism.
2.3.Procedure
Before distributing the surveys, all the participants signed the consent form, and they were
informed about their rights as volunteer participants and about the nature of study. Answering
survey and open-ended questions took around 20-25 minutes. After collecting survey data,
exploratory data analysis was used to analyze survey data to get an idea of what was there. In
exploratory data analysis, attempts were made to identify the major features of a data set of interest
and to generate ideas for further investigations (Cox, & Jones, 1981). For analyzing open-ended
questions, thematic analysis was used. Thematic analysis gives “a rich description of the data set, or
a detailed account of one particular aspect” (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 6-11)
After analyzing data from survey and open-ended questions, the researchers decided to revise
the predetermined interview questions according to participants’ answers to survey and open-
ended questions. Based on availability of the students (availability sampling), six of them (2 PhD, 2
Master, and 2 BA students) were chosen for interview to get more in-depth results, illustrate some
ambiguous answers, and make the results more reliable. Each interview lasted about 15 minutes
and it was audio-recorded with participants` consent. The collected data from students` interviews
were transcribed immediately after each interview, and using the thematic analysis, the transcribed
data were analyzed.
3.Results
Surveys were distributed among 42 ELT students and all answered the surveys. However, only
39 of them answered the open-ended questions. As mentioned before, after collecting data from
survey and open-ended questions, six participants were interviewed and the results of the surveys
and the interviews collectively were categorized into the following themes:
1.Preferable denition of plagiarism by students
2.Familiarity to the concept of plagiarism
3.Reasons for student plagiarism
4.Teaching about avoiding plagiarism
5.Ways to avoid plagiarism
6.Experience of anti-plagiarism software such as Turnitin and its eectiveness
The rst three categories were based on survey and the last three were according to open-
ended questions.
Results of Surveys
Descriptive statistics of the rst part of the survey which consisted of 6 questions are shown
in Table 2. In discussion of results strongly agree and agree are considered as agree and strongly
disagree and disagree as disagree.
As Table 2 shows, all of the students agreed that rst item which is using words of others as
their own was a kind of plagiarism. For the second item, using someone else`s idea in their own
work, more than 95% considered it as plagiarism and only two (4.9%) students had no idea about
this item. Similarly, for third item more than 95% accepted that presenting results of others in their
work is plagiarism; however, two participants (4.9%) did not consider this item as plagiarism. Unlike

Applied Linguistics Research Journal, 2019, 3 (5), 63–75 67
other denitions of plagiarism in (items 1, 2, 3), more than 80% of students believed that getting
their ideas from books is not plagiarism, whereas only about 12% (5 students) saw it as plagiarism
and three (7.3%) students did not have any opinion.
Table 2. Preferable denition of plagiarism
Denitions of plagiarism Strongly
agree
N P
Agree
N P
Neutral
N P
Disagree
N P
Strongly
disagree
N P
1. Plagiarism is using someone else’s words as if
they were your own
39
95.1%
2
4.9%
0
0%
0
0%
0
0%
2. Plagiarism is using someone else’s ideas as if
they were your own.
37
90.2%
2
4.9%
2
4.9%
0
0%
0
0%
3. Plagiarism is using someone else’s results as if
they were your own
36
87.8%
3
7.3%
0
0%
2
4.9%
0
0%
4. Plagiarism is getting your ideas from a text
book
5
12.2%
0
0%
3
7.3%
17
41.5%
16
39%
5. Plagiarism is copying and pasting without
acknowledging the original source.
37
90.2%
4
9.8%
0
0%
0
0%
0
0%
6. Plagiarism is getting ideas from a source and
paraphrasing them but without acknowledging
the original source.
27
65.9%
4
9.8%
3
7.3%
1
2.4%
6
14.6%
In item number ve like the rst item, all students believed that copying something and using
it without addressing the exact source is plagiarism. Although seven (17%) students rejected that
if they paraphrase ideas of a source and use it without giving reference is a kind of plagiarism,
31(75.7%) students acknowledged it and 3 neither agreed nor disagreed.
Results of Table 3 showed that except 2 students, who did not have ideas, all other students
(95.1%) agreed that when there a joint assignment, only one of the researchers publish it only
under his/her names is a kind of plagiarism. All of the students approved that copying the exact
assignment of their friend is considered as plagiarism. In item 9, although majority of students (more
than 90%) acknowledged a friend who copied their exact assignment is accused of plagiarism, four
of them disagreed. All students in item 10 concurred that submitting works of others under their
own names is plagiarism. Thirty-nine of students (more than 95%) believed that submitting an
article with only their names, which is done by their friends or professors too, is plagiarism, while
two of them did not consider it as plagiarism. Forty participants acknowledged that they will be
accused of kind of plagiarism if they use survey of other articles and do not acknowledge its exact
source, whereas only one student did not agree with this item.

68 Mohammadkarimi et al.
Table 3. Kinds of plagiarism based on participants` perception.
Kinds of plagiarism Strongly
agree
N P
Agree
N P
Neutral
N P
Disagree
N P
Strongly
disagree
N P
7. Submit an assignment produced as a joint
eort but under your name only.
30
73.1%
9
22%
2
4.9%
0
0%
0
0%
8. Copy a completed assignment of your friend 37
90.2
4
9.8
0
0%
0
0%
0
0%
9. Lend a completed assignment to a friend who
then copies some parts of it.
27
65.9%
10
24.4%
0
0%
3
7.3%
1
2.4%
10. Pass o someone else’s work as your own
and for your own benet
38
92.7
3
7.3%
0
0%
0
0%
0
0%
11. You work on a term project with your class-
mates/professor and submit the article under
your name only.
32
78%
7
17.1%
0
0%
2
4.9%
0
0%
12. Take a survey from an article and work on it
without acknowledging
the source and writer.
36
87.8
4
9.8%
0
0%
1
2.4%
0
0%
Based on the results of Table 4, all of the students agreed that the rst reason for plagiarizing
is that it is easy, which is rst item (number 13). Thirty-two students (78%) chose item number 14,
lack of competency in English, as the second reason. The third reason based on students` perception
with more than 73% agreement, was item number 17, consequences of plagiarizing.
Other important reasons with the same percentage (63.4%) were item 15, lack of time for doing
their projects, and item and item 21, diculty in changing original well-written text.
However, 28 students (68.3%) disagreed with item 18 and 22, respectively carelessness of
professors about plagiarizing of students and lack of transparency in university rules regarding
plagiarism. Moreover, students` answers showed that the following items could not be reasons of
students for plagiarizing:
Item 19: There is not any dierence between someone who plagiarized and others who
did not (65.8% disagree).
Item 20: Because others do it (61% disagree).
Item 23: Irresponsibility of universities, regarding helping students avoid plagiarizing
(58.5% disagree).
Item 24: There is no consequence of doing plagiarism (61% disagree).

Applied Linguistics Research Journal, 2019, 3 (5), 63–75 69
Table 4. Reasons of plagiarizing
Reasons of plagiarizing Strongly
agree
N P
Agree
N P
Neutral
N P
Disagree
N P
Strongly
disagree
N P
13. It is easy to plagiarize. 22
53.7%
19
46.3%
0
0%
0
0%
0
0%
14. They do not have a good command
of English
13
31.7%
19
46.3%
9
22%
0
0%
0
0%
15. They usually do not have enough time
to meet the deadlines
13
31.7%
13
31.7%
0
0%
5
12.2%
10
24.4%
16. Professors do not pay much attention
to detect plagiarism
1
2.4%
5
12.2%
9
22%
15
36.6%
11
26.8%
17. They do not know much about the severity of
plagiarism and its consequences.
9
22%
21
51.2%
11
26.8%
0 0
18. Most of the professors themselves do not
care much about term projects, and they only
think of our exam papers as a criterion for our -
nal grades. I prefer to spend more time on reading
for the exam rather than doing my term projects.
0
0%
4
9.8%
9
22%
12
29.2%
16
39%
19. There is no dierence in teachers’ evaluation of
the plagiarized and non-plagiarized projects.
0
0%
6
14.6
8
19.6%
13
31.7%
14
34.1%
20. Everyone else is doing it. 0
0%
12
29.2%
4
9.8%
8
19.6%
17
41.4%
21. They feel the original text is well-written and
dicult to be changed.
5
12.2%
21
51.2%
11
26.8%
0
0%
4
9.8%
22. Because of the lack of clarity in university
regulations.
0
0%
4
9.8%
9
22%
13
31.7%
15
36.6%
23. universities do not take responsibilities for
teaching students what is considered as plagia-
rism
8
19.6%
6
14.6%
3
7.3%
17
41.4%
7
17.1%
24. Because of the same treatment to those who
plagiarize and those who don’t.
2
4.9%
11
26.8%
3
7.3%
9
22%
16
39%
Results of open-ended questons
From 42 participants 40 answered the open-ended question for the interview part. Results
were analyzed based on the following themes: a) Teaching avoiding plagiarism; b) Ways to avoid

70 Mohammadkarimi et al.
plagiarism; c) Experience of anti-plagiarism software such as Turnitin and its eectiveness.
a)learning about avoiding plagiarism
Results showed that although 25 students (61%) acknowledged that they have been taught
about plagiarism and ways of avoiding it during their BA and MA studies, they mostly noted that
it was not enough. On the other hand, 16 students (39%) claimed that they have not been taught
about plagiarism and how to avoid it or it was insucient. Overall, although most of the students
answered with yes or no, their answers mostly were not clear cut because even when some of them
answered with yes, later they complained their lack of information:
Yes, but not in formal manner. The university had academic support service, where they
would help us (Participant 14).
No, I mean, no such detailed information was given or we haven`t talked about the
“plagiarism” for on complete session. Each and everyone was responsible for learning it
on your own, which generally ended up with “not caring about it” for most of the students
(Participant 8).
I`ve been warned but not taught! (Participant 22).
b)Ways to avoid plagiarism
Analyzing participants` answers showed they mostly (more than 70%) suggested formal
training about ways of avoiding plagiarism and acknowledging the original reference is the best
that help students avoid plagiarizing. Moreover, they pointed out that university and professors
can do it through a complete course, seminars, conferences, or workshops. However, there were
some suggestions for giving penalty and less grades for those students who plagiarized and giving
more time for their projects.
Students might not plagiarize if there is enough time for project submission… (Participant
26).
Hard grading may raise awareness about plagiarism, -teaching techniques to avoid
plagiarism (Participant 33).
Specic courses of what plagiarism is and its consequences (Participant 3).
c)Experience of anti-plagiarism software such as Turnitin and its eectiveness.
According to their answers, more than 90% of participants (38 students) believed that plagiarism
checkers such as Turnitin is eective. However, more than 80% of them (33 students) complained
about some defects of Turnitin such as detection of quotes as plagiarism, even when reference is
given and probability of deceiving Turnitin.
It is eective, however the results are sometime exaggerated (especially when considering
references as plagiarized parts) (Participant 33).
Anti-plagiarism is a good instrument for plagiarism check but not very eective in
plagiarism prevention, because smart students have ways of going around the program,
without being detected (Participant 26).
Results of Intervews
After cross-analysis of the interview with the collected data of survey stated after any
questionnaire analysis, it was revealed that most of comments of participants were compatible
with the survey data. There were also some questions in the interview that were not considered
before in the survey and open-ended questions. They were categorized in two subtitles: Extent of
intentionally and students` suggestions.
a)Extent of intentionality
Results of the interview showed PhD students are less likely to plagiarize in their projects
and most of their plagiarized parts based on Turnitin results is unintentionally and mostly due to
quotation and referencing.

Applied Linguistics Research Journal, 2019, 3 (5), 63–75 71
I always try to avoid plagiarism, but most of the time after submitting my projects I see
that I have some amount of plagiarism in my Turnitin results. I think most of them is not
my fault and is defect of Turnitin that shows quotations as plagiarism; also, if you write
something like “Results of the study showed that” it detects as similarity because most of
the studies use this phrase (Participant 40- PhD).
On the other hand, undergraduate and master students mentioned that sometimes they
intentionally plagiarize and sometime it is because of their lack of knowledge and time for
paraphrasing and acknowledging the original sources.
To be honest, sometimes I copy and paste some part of texts, especially when I don`t know
how to paraphrase or I don`t have time to do it… (Participant 11).
b)Students` suggestion
Students had various suggestions for avoiding plagiarism and improving their writings. Master
and undergraduate students` suggestions were about more training regarding correct ways
of giving reference and paraphrasing, while PhD students suggested that it is better professors
check the plagiarized parts to see whether they were intentionally or unintentionally; in addition,
professors use Turnitin before submission of projects not for submitting project.
We need more training and information about how to give reference and how to paraphrase
and it`s better that professors give us feedback … (Participant 36- undergraduate).
I think it is better that professors do not use Turnitin for grading; it should be a tool for
helping students. They should use Turnitin before submitting nal copy of project and
just for helping students to see plagiarized parts and after correcting, submit them
(Participant 25- PhD).
4.Concluson and Dscusson
This study tried to nd students` general perception toward the eectiveness of the anti-
plagiarism software Turnitin through triangulating the data, using survey with some open-ended
questions and interview. Regarding the rst research question, responses of students in survey
showed that all participants agreed using words of others as their own is plagiarism. There is a
consistency between this nding and ndings of Rezanejad and Rezaei (2013). Although the
participants’ responses to the second research question which is relating the kind of plagiarism
showed familiarity of participants with the plagiarism, copying assignments of friends and
submitting works of others as your own were two more recognized kinds of plagiarism, similar to
the results found in the study by Rezanejad and Rezaei (2013).
In the spite of the fact that the results of survey revealed that the easiness of plagiarizing was
the rst reason for all participants, the interviews showed that participants based on their academic
levels had dierent reasons for their plagiarizing. Comparably, Ereta and Gokmenoglu (2010) and
Nemati (2016) achieved similar results to this part of the interview, and the results of survey in
this regard are in agreement with Rezanejad and Rezaei (2013). These ndings could be a justied
answer for the third research question.
The fourth research question concerned students` previous learning about avoiding plagiarism.
Based on the results of open-ended questions, majority of participants (61%) acknowledged that
it was not enough what they had been taught about plagiarism and ways of avoiding it in their
previous studies, On the other hand, 16 students (39%) claimed that they had not been taught
about plagiarism and how to avoid it or it was insucient. In contrast, in her study, Nemati (2016)
found out that students did not have previous learning about plagiarism.
In the answer to the fth question, participants agreed that providing students with enough
pedagogical strategies regarding plagiarism is the best way of preventing students from
plagiarizing; this is in the same line with studies such as Howard (2007) and Yamada (2003).
Although in some studies (Stapleton, 2012; Ali, 2013), including the current study, the
eectiveness of anti-plagiarism softwares such as Turnitin were identied, there are some

72 Mohammadkarimi et al.
suggestions based on the interview part of this study to use Turnitin before submitting their nal
projects and receiving feedbacks from professors based on the results of Turnitin. These results are
compatible with Akçapınar (2015). Furthermore, similar to the ndings of Ali`s (2013) study about
ways of minimizing students’ plagiarism, some students in the interviews pointed out that Turnitin
had some limitations such as detecting quotations as plagiarism.
In this study it was identied that anti-plagiarism software such as Turnitin could be an eective
deterrent against plagiarism. However, in order to maximize its eectiveness, it is suggested
that in order to decrease the anxiety of students, it is better for professors to give their students
appropriate feedback before submitting their works, and as much as possible give them feedbacks
based on the results of Turnitin, especially for master and undergraduate students. According to
Koul, Clariana, Jitgarun, and Songsriwittaya (2009), there were signicant dierences between
perceptions of female and male students regarding plagiarism, but as a limitation, in this study,
perceptions of males and females were not investigated. Furthermore, number of participants in
the pilot study, and main participants in both survey and interview, were not statistically enough.
Future study about the eect of professors` feedback on students` results of Turnitin could be
valuable.

Applied Linguistics Research Journal, 2019, 3 (5), 63–75 73
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Applied Linguistics Research Journal, 2019, 3 (5), 63–75 75
Appendx 1
Table 5 Breakdown of pilot study participants
Level Number Age gender
PhD 2 26- 28 (average 27) 1 Female- 1 male
Masters 2 23- 26 (average 24.5) 1 Female- 1 male
Undergraduate 1 22 1 Female