Job Discussion Forums

[justme]

So? Ideas on getting students not to cheat? Anyone been successful in getting them to realize that cutting and pasting their 'essays' from websites and copying other students' papers is cheating? Anyone been successful in getting them to understand it's wrong?

I'm starting to think I'm the only one against it. Maybe it's because I'm the only foreign teacher here (private uni prep school). It's a losing battle despite lectures, giving zeros, and shaming. All my quizzes are long- answer and they seem to believe I won't notice if 3 students sitting near each other all have the same answers. I even give zeros to the innocent clever ones that the others cheat from, hoping it will cause an argument. Or something.

All to no avail. I'm getting peevish about it. Yesterday one student used his phone to photograph other students as they were cheating (5-6 photos of different students in a class of about 20 during a 15 minute quiz). Ok, that was kind of funny but I'm running out of ideas...

It's not like I'm the model voice of morality and reason, but don't Turkish schools have any repercussions for this? Do any of your schools? Does the notion of plagiarism exist here?

I know they think of copying as 'helping,' and ownership of ideas comes mostly from the West. While my school takes measures to prevent cheating on exams (A & B versions), the admin seems to look at cheating as a given and something unpreventable, or as something funny, like the follies of youth.

I'd like to tell the little fundamentalists that you go to hell if you cheat, but they probably won't believe it from a gavur...

[Faustino]

Nor do my students take this issue seriously. At present, I have a policy of not accepting work that is clearly above a student's level. It's funny that they don't realise that we can spot this a mile off.

How do you catch people who've cut and pasted? I usually write out the sentence in question verbatim into google, and can often get an exact match from wherever they've skanked it from.

[justme]

I can catch mine with cut & paste because they're pre-int-- I automatically give zeros if things are above their level, but they just get mad at me. If they argue I turn to shaming--I read aloud a sentence from the paper and ask them to explain to the class what it means. Some of them, while cutting and pasting, actually bother to look up and translate the writing (I guess they think this makes it their own work!), so if they obviously did that I'll give a few Brownie points for effort.

Some of them are more clever, and they find ESL student essays online and then copy those, and I can usually catch it because the errors aren't Turkish-English.

One guy found a book summary from a British ESL learner, and I told him I knew it wasn't his because I'm teaching them American English (also it was way above his level). But he was so amazed he hasn't tried to cheat since then...

[Faustino]

A friend of mine got an essay from a 19-year-old male hazirlik student, in which he described, in great detail, the joys of being a mother of three who had spent all of her (did he mean 'his') life in and around Detroit. To be fair, said student stuck to his (or her) guns, and said that he was imagining what it would be like to write from an 'different' perspective, and at no point admitted to plagiarising. My friend asked him repeatedly over the following weeks how is children were doing in and around Detroit.

[justme]

That's pretty good! I had a student writing about a company, but his online source was using the abbreviation of 'associate' that means 'g�t' in Turkish. He clearly had no idea that he was writing about an Associate President, but accepted the shame well when I told him his paper and Power Point presentation had numerous references to the G�t Başkanı of Diler Metal Inc...

(Many apologies for the Turkish words-- it's the only way I could think of to avoid Dave's Auto-Censor program...)

[whynotme]

A student of mine gave me a writing telling me what she had done at the weekend...i easily understood that it was written by her brother who stayed in the US for a couple of years coz it was too good for her, but the problem was one of the sentence, " ........after the cinema we went to a restaurant and ate sensitive balls." i was shocked, he meant that he ate "icli kofte" the direct translation is sensitive meat balls , but the girl missed the word "meat"


iclikofte: tradionalturkish food made in Gaziantep wih minced beef and wheat..... ( doesnt look like balls btw.)

[ekmekparasi]

At the private uni I worked at the attitude was:

Gec sin, gec sin, n'olacak?

[Faustino]

Sorry, I don't speak Turkish very well, what does that mean?

[justme]

After 3 years I still think it's funny when they say, 'I feel myself good...'

[whynotme]

A friend of mine working for a private uni. told me after teaching 240 hours to an elementary class they became beginners.....

justme ..... private universities are the worst places to work ....in 1999 i worked 10 days for a private uni..(asian side) it was the worst job ever..... who goes to private universities in Turkey? guesss who...

[Faustino]

I appreciate that you may have had a bad 10-day experience at a private university but they're not all bad. I would never leave this sector of the profession to work in a language school.

[whynotme]

[ImanH]

Just how bad are these students?

[yaramaz]

Which one?

[Faustino]

I guess you must have worked in the wrong kind of universities, although I concur, there are a lot of places that completely match your description. Anyway, enjoy your evenings and weekends - the classes that is.