Dealing with plagiarism when giving feedback

ESL teachers may find it hard to deal with plagiarism because they are aware that it is a concept which is to some extent specific to western cultures. For this reason, they may be reluctant to address the issue through their feedback, even though it is a topic of some importance to ESL students preparing for academic studies. I will use data from a study of teacher-written feedback to show how this leads to teachers giving indirect feedback when dealing with plagiarism in student texts, which in turn leads to miscommunication with their students.