English Reflective Journal

            Academic integrity means "intellectual honesty". This includes honesty in the use of information, arguments, and in other fields related to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Students are trained to be honest for themselves and this can be reflected from their academic works such as assignments, essay as well as their personality.

            I have never been exposed to assignments before as I was an A-Level student back in college. However, since I have started my university life at Taylor’s University, I realized that working on assignments is not just a task to be done, but a soft skill I have to learn in order to enhance my personal development. During the class, lecturer has introduced UWE Harvard referencing system to us to prevent allegations of cheating, whether intentionally or unintentionally and it also acts as guidance for me in order to complete my assignments.

            Throughout the lectures and tutorials, I understand it is very crucial for every student to obey the rules of academic integrity which are being set by their own institution. This is to ensure that students’ works are based on their own backbreaking effort and they have actually gained specific skills from their learning experience as it is beneficial in improving their personality when they have graduated from university. Besides, it is also to nail down that performances of students are irrefutable and recognizable, for the sake of the reputation of the university.

            In fact, application always comes in when we have learnt something. I feel that academic integrity is an imperative skill for me as I can perform better in my academic work to reduce the plagiarism rate. This is because I would have to acknowledge the authors by citing the sources whenever I have quoted or paraphrase the information from other sources. However, by doing this is insufficient to score in assignments if the way of citation is done wrongly. Therefore, I must be able to identify the various types of sources and acknowledge them in specific ways, as different sources required different types of citations, according to how the lecturers have taught us and by referring to guidelines from UWE Harvard referencing system. It actually takes me quite a long time to get used to it but nevertheless I believe that it would eventually favor me in return.

            In a nutshell, integrity has driven me to be a more reliable and truthful person in everything I do. I have trained to learn from my mistakes and being responsible for every action I have taken and actions that I am going to take. I actualize that a company would not hire a person without integrity no matter how well they are in academic because they are fraudulent and they will not commit perfectly in their work. As a student at Taylor’s University, I have being trained on how to apply knowledge and theory effectively and this will definitely cause me to have an edge over others when I am going to work in future.