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Introduction
Essay-writing is a hard task for most students. They have to put their thoughts into grammatically and stylistically appropriate forms, link sentences so that they create the cohesion of the text. But the most difficult in the writing process is to make due acknowledgements when borrowing another author's ideas. One has to learn how to
"take down the bibliographical details of books used and write the page numbers of material used for note-taking " ( Nikolov Turner, 1996 ) , in order to avoid the accusation of committing plagiarism.

This research paper reflects the attitudes of English majors at Janus Pannonius University ( JPU ) towards plagiarism. It will enlighten how they use source materials when writing their essays, and also reveal whether they plagiarise, or not. My hypothesis was that students can avoid the literary stealing by practicing ( that is writing several essays ).

Method
Thirty-six English majors at JPU participated in a research on essay-writing. In the procedure of collecting information from students, I got the assisstance of one of my groupmates, Klup‡cs Fl—ra, a second-year English Biology major at JPU. She collected data on April 28 and 29 from seventeen students, I made nineteen students fill in the questionnaires on April 29. On these two days we asked our groupmates to give information before their classes would have begun.
Students at the English Departement of JPU were asked to fill out a hand-written questionnaire. They had to answer four questions without writing their names on the paper. The respondents were told that they were not obliged to answer those questions with which they felt not comfortable. I collected the questionnaires. All the questions were answered.

After collecting the 36 questionnaires, I began to analyse the information English majors gave me. I wrote each question down on four separate blank sheets of paper. Below each question I indicated the different answers. This research paper reflects the results I got the way described above.

English majors at JPU were asked to answer the following questions:
Which semester do you attend as an English major?
How do you use different sources when writing an essay?
To what extent can you detach yourself from those sources? ( Do you plagiarise? )
Does practice ( writing lots of essays ) help you avoid plagiarism? Why, why not?
The reason for asking these questions was that I was interested in attitudes towards plagiarism, and I wanted to get to the point step by step. First, I would have liked to know the reasons for plagiarism ( students may plagiarise because they have written few essays for being only a first-year student, or they cannot use sources appropriately when writing an essay ). Then I came to the point : I asked the respondents whether they plagiarise or not. In the last question I gave a possible solution for avoiding plagiarism ( that is practice ), and the students replied why it was practicable, or why not.

Results and Discussion

Which semester do you attend as an English major?
All 36 students who returned the questionnaire answered this question. Nineteen students spent their second, fourteen students spent their fourth, two students spent their sixth, and one student spent his or her ( as the respondents answered anonymously ) eighth semester as an English major at JPU.

How do you use different sources when writing an essay?
All the 36 students returned their questionnaire by giving a brief information on their source-appropriation in the process of essay writing. Out of 36 students, 30 replied that they made acknowledgements, indicated the applied sources in the bibliography or reference section of the essays. If they did not want to change the style or the vocabulary of the text, they put the words in quotation marks. Four students took short notes, collected ideas from different readings, or simply summarised the sources. Only two students used their brains when they had to write an essay.

To what extent can you detach yourself from those sources? ( Do you plagiarise? )
All 36 students who took the questionnaire answered this question. Twenty students admitted that they plagiarised when they were required to write about a topic they were not excperts in. Fourteen students claimed that they cited the ideas they thought as relevant ones. Two students refused that they had even once plagiarised.

Does practice ( writing lots of essays ) help you avoid plagiarism? Why, why not?
The last question was also answered by all the 36 students who returned their questionnaires. Twenty students answered that practice did help avoid plagiarism as it made them move towards individualistic way of thinking, forced them to think by
themselves, gave them a better chance not to plagiarised, and also helped them to learn the perfect ways of citing. Sixteen students asserted that practice did not help avoid plagiarism, because one plagiarised from the beginning or never, it was not practice but common sense that helped, plagiarism was a conscious activity.

It is hard to define what plagiarism is and what paraphrasing means. They are borderlines, because to plagiarise something is equal to " pass off as one' own ( the ideas or work of another ) " , paraphrasing is a " restatement of text, passage, or work giving the meaning in another form " ( Webster's new encyclopedic dictionary, 1993 ).Paraphrasing is also considered as plagiarism at the English Departement of JPU according to the 1.4 version of the Guidelines for writing theses in the English Departement of JPU by Nikolov, M and Turner, S , which says :
" plagiarism also includes borrowing the ideas and arguments author without due acknowledgement, even if the words are changed ".

The process of essay-writing inevitebly involves some kind of textual borrowing
( Pennycook, 1996 ). Half of the respondents claimed in my research that they plagiarised ( or paraphrased ) when they were required to write about a topic they were not experts in. This process is regarded as natural among students in general, because if they do not have the faintest idea about the field that has to be revealed, they read several texts, works that deal with the topic, and write down what they have found in the readings. In this sense they have stolen other writersÕ ideas, so they committed plagiarism, but they had to paraphrase as well ( " giving the meaning in another form " ), if they did not want to quote the whole text. At this point it also has to be taken into consideration that " all language learning is to some extent a process of borrowing other's words and we need to be lexible, not dogmatic, about where we draw boundaries between acceptable or unacceptable textual borrowings"
( Pennycook,1996 ).

One way of avoiding plagiarism, as I hypothesised, is practice. Out of 36 students who took the questionnaire, twenty agreed on this solution, because as the time goes by one can learn how to acknowledge other authors' work in an appropriate way. Sixteen students could not see any connection between practice and plagiarism. I can accept their opinion according to which plagiarism is a conscious activity, for, unfortunately , I know some students in my milieu who want to make their way without putting much effort in the work they are required to do, in this situation practice could not be a solution for avoiding plagiarism at all.

Conclusion
During this survey I gained a lot of information on essay-writing attitudes among English majors at JPU, focusing on one specific aspect, that is plagiarism. I expected to get to know the reason for plagiarising, also I tried to provide a practicable solution for avoiding textual borrowing ( Pennycook,1996 ), and I wanted to find out whether it is acceptable among English majors at JPU, or not. Not knowing the theme that has to be revealed in an essay makes the respondents plagiarise, which can be avoided by practicing in most students' opinion. I would like to go on with this topic and carry out a more extensive and detailed research, asking also four- and five-year English majors, so that I can get a full image of attitudes towards plagiarism among students at the English Departement of JPU.