If by "latitude" you mean cutting them some slack and not 
expelling them at the first instance of using someone 
else's words, I would support that.  Most faculty here do 
recognize that non-native speakers of English have 
compounded issues learning how to write academic English. 
 Plus different publication styles have their own rules 
for how to cite which makes when and how to cite even more 
confusing.

But after a time, non-native English speaker or not, we 
would expect them to pick up on what plagiarism is. 
 Recently an Asian student here was almost expelled 
because after two years of various people explaining to 
him how to cite, he still went and copied text from 
somewhere and put it in his master's comps exam, sans 
credit!  That was too much for the people who had been 
working with him for those two years.  (Eventually they 
gave him another chance so he's still here.)

I would turn the question back to a corollary issue that 
has already been brought up.  Regardless of what language 
is their first, if giving credit and academic honesty is 
just as important in other-than-European cultures as it is 
for us, why should we give them any latitude?  Either they 
get the concept of plagiarism or they don't.  They may 
have to learn the mechanics of certain citation styles 
(APA, MLA, etc.) but the idea of giving credit should 
already be there.  Right?  One of my tutors just told me 
of a student she had earlier today--out of a 20-page 
paper, about 19 were plagiarized.  When she asked the 
student where he got some text that was written in a very 
different style than the part she could tell was his, he 
admitted that he did not come up with it, but the text 
wasn't marked with quotes either.  He was willing to admit 
that the text wasn't his, he wasn't trying to hide it, but 
he also didn't feel the need to cite it.  (Of course she 
told him he should, but it's illustrative of the 
continuing problem.)

Rebel
College of Education
Graduate Student Writing Studio
University of New Mexico




On Tue, 11 May 2010 17:50:52 +0200
  Russell Kent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear List Members,
> 
> A question I would like to pose to the list.
> 
> Do members feel that more latitude regarding plagiarism 
>should be given to
> non-native speakers of English than native speakers?
> 
> I would be interested in knowing list members opinions. 
> 
> I sometimes just wonder if too much is asked of some 
>non-native speakers
> because lack of language is an extra barrier they have 
>to face.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Russ Kent
> 
> -----Original Message-----
>From: European Association for the Teaching of Academic 
>Writing -
> discussions [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of 
>Linda McPhee
> Sent: 11 May 2010 10:38
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: teaching 'own ideas', was Do SS learn to 
>plagiarize in our classes?
> 
>> 
>> Rebel Palm wrote:
>> 
>>> ... By the time they reach graduate school, these 
>>>students have had a
> career of being able to get away with throwing other 
>people's (some
> expert's) ideas at a paper, writing it once (no 
>revisions), with very little
> effort spent on original thought.  Some of them come to 
>me perplexed at a
> prof's demand for your "own ideas."  They say, "no one's 
>ever told me I get
> to have my own ideas."  And this is grad school!
> 
> About teaching 'own ideas'
> 
> One thing I learned from an undergrad writing course (I 
>swore I'd never
> forget that teacher's name, and I want to give her 
>credit, but I just can't
> right now; Mary something) was to keep a notebook on my 
>thinking. She had us
> finish each class by writing down three questions 
>related to the lesson.
> These could not be questions that could be answered by 
>any equivalent of
> googling them (well, that didn't exist then, but you 
>know what I mean). At
> the end of the week we had 9 questions each, and our 
>weekend assignment was
> to choose the most interesting one, and write a one page 
>exploration of it.
> Not an 'answer', an exploration.
> 
>   She would collect these on Mondays and give them back 
>on Tuesdays, so she
> was skimming them to be sure that we were asking real 
>questions and
> exploring them honestly. Sometimes there was a little 
>checkmark, and
> sometimes a short comment about this or that aspect, but 
>she wasn't putting
> a lot of time into them.
> 
>   I think she may have used them as well to get 
>inspiration for exam
> questions... at least, several questions closely related 
>to some of mine
> ended up on our mid-term and final (and hey, I'd already 
>thought about them,
> so that was lucky for me). Maybe she didn't do that 
>consciously, because in
> later classes the same thing happened, and those 
>instructors never knew
> about the notebooks.
> 
>   This system worked so well for my thinking processes 
>that after that
> semester I did it in all my classes... and right through 
>grad school, though
> by then I would jot questions into the notebook whenever 
>they crossed my
> mind, rather than at a set time.  I only taught 
>undergrads two years, but I
> taught them this as a survival skill -- sometimes groups 
>had to create the
> questions based their favourite class, sometimes on my 
>class. Nearly all of
> them liked it. 
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Bring to the act of writing all of your craft, care, 
devotion, lack of humbug, and honesty of sentiment. And 
then write without looking over your shoulder for the 
literary police. Write as if your life depended on saying 
what you felt as clearly as you could, while never losing 
sight of the phenomenon to be described.
Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art