Abstract
Cheating and plagiarism spread like pandemics in many educational contexts and are difficulty to detect, fight and also to understand. The purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate what first-year students of English at a large Hungarian university believe to be the main reasons for plagiarism. Twenty-five students were asked to express their views in a free opinion essay. Perceived reasons were categorized into twelve main groups based on the literature and the reasons for plagiarism provided by faculty members at the same university. The most often mentioned reasons included saving time and effort and unintentional plagiarism.