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I have submitted my essay via Turnitin. Subsequently a similarity report was generated where all similar bits in my work were flagged up with the work of others. There is one bit flagged up where I did not cite. Is it considered plagiarism?

This is what I wrote:

This theory is applicable to educational institutions where students have limited exposure to L2 culture, for instance they do not live in an area where L2 is spoken.

Below is the source which Turnitin compared my words with:

Visual media can provide a valuable source of authentic input for students who do not live in the country where the L2 is spoken.

The words in bold are the bits flagged up by Turnitin.

On a side note, 'this theory' in my sentence does not refer to the same argument in the source. In my opinion it is just that the author of the source and I happened to use the same expression to describe people who do not live in an L2-speaking area. When I was writing this essay, I did not even know the existence of the source!

I hope it is not considered plagiarism. Although the same phrase was used, the two sentences mean different things!

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    I observe in passing that the content of OP's text suggests that they're on an education studies programme. Therefore, in a few years' time, OP might be responsible for training the rest of us in how to construe "plagiarism".
    – Daniel Hatton
    Commented Jun 15, 2021 at 12:08
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    If that software was just a little bit worse, it would flag all occurrences of the "phrases" "I have", "do not", "will be", etc. as plagiarism.
    – vsz
    Commented Jun 15, 2021 at 15:34
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    @vsz The software is indeed capable of being configured that way.
    – Daniel Hatton
    Commented Jun 15, 2021 at 16:31
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    This is only slightly less ridiculous than that old satirical Onion article about Microsoft patenting 1's and 0's, thus claiming royalties on every bit of digital data in existence...
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Commented Jun 15, 2021 at 19:43
  • That's clearly not plagiarism, though it might have been appropriate for some kind of wide-spectrum trawling software to flag it up for human oversight. In terms of "plagiarism" consider also, "common way of expression…" Does "common" mean "frequently used" or "uneducated" or something else?
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Commented Jun 15, 2021 at 23:39

2 Answers 2

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It is unlikely to be considered plagiarism or improper in any way. It would be unreasonable to claim that it is. It actually highlights the limitations of tools like TurnItIn.

Such short phrases have little to do with plagiarism, which is the misappropriation of ideas. There is no complete thought in the phrase that TurnItIn flagged.

Moreover, plagiarism is necessarily a conscious act. You didn't plagiarize if you were unaware of the other text. That doesn't, in general, prevent a claim of plagiarism, but it would seem not credible here. Relax.

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    "plagiarism is necessarily a conscious act" -- that sounds like too strong a statement. It isn't just plagiarism if someone is out to commit plagiarism, just like you're not only committing tax fraud because you were planning to commit text fraud. The next sentence clarifies what I know you want to say, though.
    – Wolfgang Bangerth
    Commented Jun 14, 2021 at 23:12
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    Indeed. I do assume that only a smallish minority of students would (deliberately) plagiarize... and, then, these "turnitin games" make other students crazy for no good reason... A large waste of mental energy ... and self-esteem, too.
    – paul garrett
    Commented Jun 14, 2021 at 23:17
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    @WolfgangBangerth, actually I meant what I said. You can't "plagiarize" by accident. It is something you "do", not something that "happens". Leibniz didn't plagiarize Newton since Newton hid his work on the Calculus. The work was equivalent, but independent. IANAL, but I think fraud also requires intent under the law. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud
    – Buffy
    Commented Jun 14, 2021 at 23:41
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    @Buffy For the UK, Advance HE's guidance on plagiarism makes it clear that intent is not necessary for a finding of plagiarism, although the absence of intent may be a mitigating factor leading to a reduced penalty.
    – Daniel Hatton
    Commented Jun 15, 2021 at 13:25
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    I think Buffy and @Wolfgang are probably talking about different things. If you read a paper closely, and then use many of the same phrases to describe the same ideas, it is absolutely plagiarism, even if, for example, you did the writing a few days later and didn’t realise you were doing so. However, if you never read the original paper, and (somehow) just happened to use the same (long and complex) phrases to describe the same ideas it isn’t plagiarism. Of course the latter is probably very rare (except for incidental amounts text as in the case here!), and also very hard to prove.
    – Andrew Jaffe
    Commented Jun 15, 2021 at 14:28
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There is no reason to see this is plagiarism. Turnitin just found two phrases that also appeared in other documents before.

I would like to stress that services like Turnitin cannot detect plagiarism. They are essentially "dumb" programs that just try to find the same phrases in other documents it was fed. This can assist in finding documents a text was copied from. But on the one hand it will frequently flag things that in the end are just more or less common expressions or phrases (though the developers try to minimize this), and on the other hand you can definitely plagiarize by e.g. rewriting things in a way that this service will not detect.

So please do not equate plagiarism with getting a flag from a service like this. It is merely a tool but it does not replace a human who can actually understand what you're saying.

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