Textual borrowing in science summaries: upper-elementary and middle school students learning to write the language of science

In writing science summaries, student writers frequently borrow language fragments from source texts. While taking a text’s ideas verbatim is commonly considered a failure in writers’ expected use of their own words or even plagiarism, imitating “linguistic chunks” from skilled speakers is also an effective practice in language development. This study argues for the need to investigate textual borrowing (TB) from a developmental perspective. A...