Measuring plagiarism in the second language essay writing context

영작문 상황에서의 표절 측정의 신뢰성 연구

This study investigates the reliability of plagiarism measurement in the ESL essay writing context. The current study aims to address the answers to the following research questions: 1) How does plagiarism measurement affect test reliability in a psychometric view? and 2) how do raters conceive the plagiarism in their analytic scoring? This study uses the mixed-methodology that crosses quantitative-qualitative techniques. Thirty eight international students took an ESL placement writing test offered by the University of Illinois. Two native expert raters rated students' essays in terms of 5 analytic features (organization, content, language use, source use, plagiarism) and made a holistic score using a scoring benchmark. For research question 1, the current study, using G-theory and Multi-facet Rasch model, found that plagiarism measurement threatened test reliability. For research question 2, two native raters and one non-native rater in their email correspondences responded that plagiarism was not a valid analytic area to be measured in a large-scale writing test. They viewed the plagiarism as a difficult measurement are. In conclusion, this study proposes that a systematic training program for avoiding plagiarism should be given to students. In addition, this study suggested that plagiarism is measured reliably in the small-scale classroom test.