Plagiarism in Digital Age: A New Challenge to EFL/ESL Writing Teachers Linglan Cao York Colege/City University of New York I. The Rise of Plagiarism on College Campuses: EFL v. ESL Compared with that in the ESL field, the counter-plagiarism endeavor in EFL teaching context suffers from: • More pressure from different social, cultural traditions which are more tolerant of plagiarism • Fewer means and scantier resources for the teachers to detect and battle student plagiarism in a foreign language • Heavier students’ dependence on the borrowing and copying from the target language due to their lower language proficiency and lack of language competence • Fiercer competition in schools and on job market II. Factors Contributing to the Plagiarism on College Campuses • Influence by students’ native culture, language and learning approaches and methods • Deficiency in English writing skills and the lack of confidence caused by such deficiency • Strong temptation of the Internet which makes plagiarism easier than ever • Lack of education on how to prevent plagiarism III. Counter-measures to Prevent Plagiarism • Raising the awareness / education • Making the assignments harder for plagiarism to take place • Integrating into the curriculum the learning of documentation, and preventing plagiarism • Identifying cases of plagiarism at early stages IV. Main Features to Be Considered for Plagiarism Checkers • Database Checking • Internet Checking • Publications Checking • Synonym & Sentence Structure Checking • Multiple Document Comparison • Multiple Languages V. Common Online Plagiarism Detection Services • Copyscape Premium (http://www.copyscape.com/) • TurnItIn (http://turnitin.com) • SafeAssign (http://www.safeassign.com/) • The Plagiarism Checker (http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/) • CheckForPlagiarism.net (http://www.checkforplagiarism.net) • Doc Cop (http://www.doccop.com) • Plagiarism Detector (www.plagiarism-detector.com)