Plagiarism (Chinese New Year)

I have an odd request. An ESL student of mine submitted a paper containing the the excerpt below.

He claims that it is his own work. I feel certain that it is not, but the google searches that usually bust plagiarizers are not turning up anything. Does anyone recognize any of the following, and if so, would you be so kind as tell me from where my student "borrowed" it?

Thanks.

Here is an excerpt from "his" paper:

The history of Chinese New Year goes back thousands of years with origins in nature and legend. The date of Chinese New Year depends on the lunar calendar and changes every year, however, this holiday happens during the very early Spring, sometime between January 30th and February 20th. New Year's Day is celebrated on the first day of the Chinese calendar. This is the day of the second new moon after the winter solstice. Perhaps the holiday began originally as a festival of nature celebrating the spring season as the new year for farmers. One rural legend tells about how an old man saves a village when a terrible beast "Nian" (or "New Year" inb Chinese) comes to eat all the people.

And so on. It sounds like an encyclopedia entry, but darned if I can find it.

Any help you can offer will be appreciated.

Hmm, I teach ESL too and my 7th graders just finished a New Year's project. What proficiency is he? I don't recognize it from any of the research they did, but then again, my students make it painfully obvious when they plagiarize (and thus very easy to bust).

I should have posted a follow up to this earlier. Although I was unable to find the source of the work the student had borrowed, I convinced him that I would find it and that there would be consequences.

The next week he came in with a revised version of his paper in which quotation marks and sources had appeared, and the rather implausible claim that he hadn't understood that such things were necessary.

So, in the end, everything worked out, and my student *may* have learned something.

At least it worked out :D Was this at a high school or college level?

The culprit was a university student in his first year. He's in a Science and Engineering course, so very likely he views English (the subject I was attempting to teach him) as just another hoop he has to jump through in the process of acquiring a degree in what he's really passionate about, civil engineering, or something like that. So he probably figured fudging things a bit was no big deal.

Not that I know the student or anything but isn't it a lil off to accuse him of plagarism because of the course he is taking in school...anyways the passage could be paraphrased and that could mess up trying to find the words in a plagarism search.

Hemlockclock:

I think you misunderstood. I accused the student of plagiraism not because of the course he is taking in school (I'm not even sure what that means). I accused him of plagiarism because the writing he submitted was clearly written by someone whose English competence was much greater than his. When the student submitted the "revised" version of the paper, the quotation marks, etc. that he had added made it clear that my hunch was correct.