Textual annotation, plagiarism and international students’ approaches to reading

1. Textual annotation, plagiarism and international students’ approaches to reading Dr Saranne Weller Senior Lecturer in Higher Education King’s College London

2. Aims of the project • how international students undertake the task of reading in preparation for assessment • how students conceptualise the task of reading-to-write • engage students in researching their own learning experiences as readers and writers

3. Plagiarism and reading • differing expectations about the integration of reading into writing (Schmitt, 2005; Weller, 2010) • “invisibility of reading” in higher education (van Pletzen, 2006) • focus on authorial [reader?] identity may reduce unintentional plagiarism (Chandrasoma et al., 2006)

4. Student task representation • to get the information to know what to say • to find the “right papers” • to “depict” understanding of topic for the marker • to prove an argument • to enter the conversation (cf. “organising plan” in Flower, 1990b)

5. Reader/author identity • legitimacy of academic identity • personhood & “voice” • position of authors/readers – authority & bias • permission to participate

6. Textual annotation • “tangible traces of their mental activities” (Wolfe, 2002) • “implicitly theorize the work of reading” (Feito & Donahue, 2008) • reveal acts of intertextuality (Kristeva, 1986)

7. Example 1: Victoria

8. Example 2: Jian

9. Example 3: Edis

10. Example 4: Hayley

11. Some conclusions • student task representation sits along a text transformation continuum (c.f. Flower, 1990b) • but student annotations also reveal their concept of reader-author identity • the intersection of these two axes provides an insight into student understanding of plagiarism • formative opportunities to reflect on reader identity using annotations could inform student’s understanding of source use

12. References • Chandrasoma, R. et al. (2004) Beyond plagiarism: Transgressive and nontransgressive intertextuality, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 3(3): pp. 171-193. • Feito, J. A. and Donahue, P. (2008) Mind the gap: Annotation as preparation for discussion. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 7(3), pp. 295-307. • Flower, L. (1990a) Introduction: Studying cognition in context. In Flower, L. et al.Reading-to-write: Exploring Cognitive and Social Processes. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-32. • Flower, L. (1990b) The role of task representation in reading-to-write. In Flower, L. et al.Reading-to-write: Exploring Cognitive and Social Processes. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 35-75.

13. References (cont.) • Kristeva, J. (1986) Word, dialogue and novel. In: Moi, T. (ed.) The Kristeva Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 34-61. • Wolfe, J. (2002) Marginal pedagogy. How annotated texts affect a writing-from-sources task. Written Communication, 19(2), pp. 297-333. • Schmitt, D. (2005) Writing in the international classroom. In: Carroll, J. & Ryan, J. (eds) Teaching International Students: Improving Learning for All. London: Routledge, pp. 63-74. • van Pletzen, E. (2006) A body of reading: making “visible” the reading experiences of first year medical students. In Thesen, L & van Pletzen, E. (eds) Academic Literacy and the Language of Change. London: Continuum, pp. 104-129 • Weller, S. (2010) Comparing lecturer and student accounts of reading in the humanities, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9(1): 85-104.