Factors that Influence Student Cheating Behaviour: An Argumentative Analysis

An Overview of the Task

Your task is to assess the arguments made in each of the articles, and the data used to support them. You are then to provide your own, reasoned and supported, views on whether the articles argue their positions successfully.

If you agree with their arguments, explain what social, cultural, educational and/or economic factors you believe might influence the decision of students to cheat. If you disagree with their arguments, explain what social, cultural, educational and/or economic factors you believe might underlay labeling international students, as a category, as cheaters. And if you think it’s some of both, explain how each of these stances hit or miss the mark.

Remember that you are assessing their arguments to make an argument of your own.

Make your argument and back it up. Extract the points that will support the position you have decided to take.

1. How well you separate unsupported opinion from reasoned argument. In an academic paper, phrases like “back in the day”, “everyone says” or “because” don’t cut it. Your paper needs to be clearly reasoned and clearly sourced and your points proven or supported by the sources.

2. How well and efficiently you summarize what you see as the important points in all the assigned articles. If you do not cite or at least refer to every article, you lose marks.

3. How well and clearly you cite each article. Are all quotes marked as such, and do you note which author or article made which point?

4. How clearly stated, organized and consistent your position is throughout the paper.

5. NOTE that simply summarizing each article in turn and then saying something vaguely related at the end does not qualify it as an essay. You need to pull stuff out and organize it in a new way that shows you thought about it.

Cite ANY 4 of the sources in the ‘Required’ list, using APA bibliographic style. The choice will depend on what position or approach you decide to take at the beginning. Please add the URL for the source and the date you accessed it in your bibliography.