Plagiarism? Writing services that all international students should know

If you are an international student, I believe you can relate to my story.

I had lots of writing assignments when I was in graduate school. I studied Higher Education Administration which is learning about U.S. colleges and universities, so reading and writing were two big parts of the program. The program wasn’t like a science-related major or a music major where you can show your knowledge and skills nonverbally, I had to be good at writing.

When I was working on the very first writing assignment, I wanted to turn in a paper that looks like graduate-level writing, but unfortunately, my writing skill was not anywhere close to my expectation. I still remember the comment I received from the professor after handing in the first writing assignment that “I plagiarized”. I went to the professor’s office hours and we had a conversation about my academic goals and how to write academically to avoid plagiarism.

Now as I advise international students in the college, I have met foreign students who express anxiety or stress that comes from the gap between their expectations in English writing and the current writing skills that they have. In the same light, I have seen cases where international students were told that they plagiarized when they attempted to just copy the writing style or some words.

This is why I wanted to write a blog post about writing services for international students and shed a light on some of the ways to improve their writing skills and avoid plagiarism.

You have read up to this point so I will share the end of my writing saga in grad school- the professor told me that I would not receive an A for the course due to the low grade of the first assignment but she gave me an A for my significant improvements throughout the semester. What is more, here I am writing blog posts for international students about F-1 visa regulations and OPT in English!

Writing services that I am going to share is not something new but these helped me tremendously so I hope you take something out from this blog post.

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Contents

• Writing center services
• Online services 1. Grammarly
• Online services 2. Chegg Writing

Writing center services

Let’s start with writing services that almost every international student can find on campus. Most U.S. colleges and universities have a writing center where international students can meet with writing coaches or tutors to review their papers. Like tutoring services, the writing center will announce at the beginning of the semester who will be writing coaches for the semester and when they will be available to schedule the appointment.

Although the office policy may vary depending on the school, one thing you should be mindful of is that writing coaches will not write your paper from the beginning to the end. In the same vein, don’t bring in the paper just to check spelling, grammar, or punctuation. This is not to say those are not important in writing but to say that the primary focus will be on checking the structure, cohesiveness, clarity, and so on.

To sum up, the advantage of going to the writing center is that it is free and accessible. Some drawbacks include that they cannot check plagiarism, and I felt that the time slot for each meeting (which was 30 minutes for my school) was too short to go over the entire paper. Since the available time slots of the writing mentor are not always the same as mine, I had to schedule several appointments with different mentors for one paper. This means that I had to explain the topic over and over to different mentors whenever I go in.

Since it was pretty tiring to explain what I am writing about to the writing coach, I personally liked to go to the writing center for bigger projects like the final term paper to confirm that the statement, that I am going to make, is understandable to others as well. For spelling, grammar, and punctuation checking, I used online services, which I am going to introduce in the following paragraphs.

Online services 1. Grammarly

I believe most international students already know what Grammarly is. The only regret that I have about Grammarly is that I didn’t use it earlier.

I love Grammarly because I have witnessed how they have improved their services over time. I started when they had Microsoft Word document-looking blank documents. When you add the new document in Grammarly, it detects spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors in few seconds.

Now it has Chrome extension and Word document extension! These extensions allow you to keep typing on the Word document or on the website and the green dot will tell you what you need to correct. And these are all free! (Honestly, you will be able to see lots of grammatical errors in my previous posts about F-1 visa regulations or OPT which I didn’t use the Grammarly extensions XD)

Furthermore, for international students, writing a paper with perfect grammar is not enough, because the tone and sentence may sound a bit off. This is because international students tend to think or write in their native languages first then translate it into English. Grammarly will serve your needs in this sense, as it provides suggestions to improve conciseness, readability, fluency just to name a few with a Premium account ($11.66 per month).

Below are available subscription plans of Grammarly.

Given the options that each plan offers, below are what I recommend for each scenario:

• I am an undergraduate international student and writing is not a big part of my course or I need a writing service that only checks spelling, grammar, and punctuation for my writing: Grammarly Free account
• I am an undergraduate international student and writing consists a big part of my grades or I would like to improve my writing skills during my study in the U.S.: Grammarly Premium account
• I am a graduate international student: Grammarly Premium account

It is also possible that you can create the free account first then upgrade later to the Premium account when you need advanced features. Of course, students’ writing skills and English skills are all different so please make your own judgment! I am telling you, you will thank Grammarly a lot even with the free account.

Online services 2. Chegg Writing

I believe you already know Chegg too for its textbook rental services. Chegg has expanded its services over time from a textbook market platform to education technology.

Chegg Writing offers unique services that are extremely helpful for international students especially those who need to write research papers. Here are how Chegg Writing can be a game-changer in your writing:

First, Chegg Writing is great for plagiarism detection. Once you submit your paper, it checks against billions of sources, so students will not receive “you have plagiarized” messages from professors. Second, it automatically creates and saves citations in 7,000+ styles including APA, MLA, Chicago just to name a few.

If you have written research papers, you will know how citation can be annoying. Before I met Chegg Writing, I used to flip over the APA manual, again and again, to make sure I quote and cite correctly. There is citation software in the market but I ended up not using it because they weren’t intuitive nor convenient to use. Therefore, just taking advantage of this feature of Chegg Writing will save you tons of effort and time.

Third, Chegg experts will proofread your papers on any topic. Although we all love automation and online, there’s still a need for real humans and proofreading is one of those things. And this is why sometimes I went to my friends whose native language is English to check on my papers after checking spellings or grammar through Grammarly.

But it was difficult to ask your friends when you ended up done with writing in the middle of the night or during the weekend. Chegg Writing is a great option in that sense- upload your paper and take a rest or work on another project. Chegg experts will get back to you within 24 hours with edited papers as well as easy-to-understand explanations on how to improve your writing for next time. 

The monthly subscription fee is less than $10 which is $9.95 per month. The best part of Chegg Writing is that it offers a 3-day trial, so feel free to try it out and make your judgment as well!

This blog post had a look at three different writing services that international students in the U.S. can take advantage of to not only hand in a perfect paper but to improve their English writing skills in the long run. Please let me know in the comment section below if you have other tips to write better papers other than the services that are introduced here.

As an international student, educating yourself with immigration regulations is also important as it can impact your future goals and plans. Please make sure you check our F-1 visa info, CPT/OPT, and STEM OPT pages.

Related blog post: Straight-A study guide: study in the USA for international students