The Cultural Difference In Writing And Plagiarism

I found that the largest difference between Japanese and English is the way how to express their opinions in essays. While the most important assertion comes after describing some supporting reasons in Japanese, the authors write the opinion at the beginning of the passage then show background for the argument. Also, structure of sentence often confuses me. For example, the noun was followed by modification to explain it; however, in Japanese, the order to express a thing is vice versa. I suggest that reading article with the purposes to learn structures and grammar is effective to improve the skill of Japanese learners. The types of verbs taught in EDUTL 106 are extremely helpful for me because those words enable me to distinguish the authors opinion and facts.

The point where I feel difficult to understand was the very arcane attitude for academic misconduct for even undergraduate students. I know that some classmates in Japan earned A's in laboratory course by submitting the reports that their senior had done, and the instructors did not care about the violations. From this experiment, I agree with the idea that cultural background effects plagiarism prevention, shown in the article "Cheating Across Cultures"(May 24, 2007) by Elizabeth Redden, because the situation I met is based on Japanese trend not to say wrong thing face to face in order to avoid troubles. I thought that punishment because of the norm violation would be given only people in research; therefore, this point was hard for me to understand before taking this class. Generally, academic misconduct was not regarded as serious violation compared to those in United States.