More than half of teachers in a UK survey said they thought plagiarism¹ from the Internet is a problem.

Some students who steal essays wholesale² from the Web, they said, are so lazy they don't even bother to take the adverts³ off the cut-and-pasted text.

Fifty-eight percent of the teachers interviewed in the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) questionnaire had come across plagiarism among their pupils.

Gill Bullen from Itchen College in Southampton for example said pieces handed in by two students were identical and "significantly better than either of them could have done."

"Not only that, the essays given in didn't quite answer the title question I had set."

A teacher from Leeds said: "I had one piece of work so blatantly⁴ 'cut and pasted' that it still contained adverts from the Web page."

Connie Robinson from Stockton Riverside College, Stockton, said: "With less able students it is easy to spot plagiarism as the writing style changes mid-assignment, but with more able students it is sometimes necessary for tutors to carry out Internet research to identify the source of the plagiarism."

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL, said: "Teachers are struggling under a mountain of cut-and-pasting to spot whether work was the student's own or plagiarism."

She called for robust⁵ policies to combat plagiarism, and asked for help from exam boards and the government in providing resources and techniques to detect cheats.

But there was another side.

"I have found once students clearly understand what plagiarism is, its consequences and how to reference correctly so they can draw on published works, plagiarism becomes less of a problem," said Diana Baker⁶ from Emmanuel College, Durham.

"I think the majority of students who engage in plagiarism do it more out of ignorance than the desire to cheat.

They really want to succeed on their own merit."

英国一项调查发现，超过一半的教师认为目前学生从网络上抄袭的问题很严重。

据老师们介绍，一些学生原封不动地拷贝（copy的音译）网上内容，甚至连“复制-粘贴”到文章中的广告都懒得删。

英国教师与讲师协会的问卷调查结果显示，58%的受访教师都遇到过学生抄袭网上内容的事例。

南安普敦伊臣学院的吉尔•布伦说，他曾发现班上两个学生交上来的作业一模一样，而且“文章水平也明显高于他们的实际水准”。

“不仅如此，文章内容也不符合要求。”

理兹学院的一名教师说：“我曾经收到一份抄得很‘大胆’的作业，文章里还夹着网页上的广告。”

斯托克顿市里弗赛德学院的康尼•罗宾逊说：“写作水平较差的学生比较容易‘露馅’，因为抄袭内容与他们本人的写作风格不一致，但对于写作水平较高的学生而言，有时老师得做一番‘考证’，才能确定他们是从哪抄的。”

英国教师与讲师协会的秘书长玛丽•鲍思蒂德说：“由于学生抄袭作业的现象很严重，因此老师现在得花很多时间来判断学生的作业是否是抄袭的。”

她呼吁相关部门出台惩治抄袭的有力措施，并希望考试委员会和政府能为老师提供检测抄袭的办法和手段。

不过事情还有另外一面。

达汉姆市艾曼纽尔学院的黛安娜•贝克说：“我发现，一旦学生搞清楚什么是‘抄袭’、抄袭的后果以及应如何适当引用参考文献，抄袭现象就会大大较少。”

“多数学生只是没弄清这些问题，并不是有意去抄袭。”

“他们还是希望通过自己的努力获得好成绩。”