Korean Job Discussion Forums

[richardlang]

We had an essay contest at my high school. I want to check that students actually wrote their own essays. It's a book report contest. Any suggestions as how to I can check they did their own work? There are about 30 to 35 students who wrote book reports.

One possibility I have in mind is making students write, on the spot, about their favorite character in the book. I would supervise them while they write.

Any other ideas?

[pkang0202]

Take a few sentences and type them into Naver or Google.

You can usually tell by the following patterns:

A few sentences in flawless English, then suddenly a sentence where obvious articles are dropped.

You find words in the British English spelling (I caught one student because they didn't think that the British spelled differently)



I think the Naver/Google search is the easiest for you to do. Don't do the entire paper, but take like 2-3 sentences from each and see if it hits anything.

If you DO catch someone, be careful how you handle it. I would pass the information off to your coteacher and let them handle things.

[iggyb]

Yes. Just google it using " "

There is a website teachers in the US use. I forget the name of it. But, you or the students upload the paper and the site gives you a percentage account of how much came from other sources and links to those sources.

But, I usually just googled a line here and these from an essay to check, because a lot of the ESL students who had regular classes as well were in the habit of plagiarizing.

[iggyb]

Also, the other suggestion from the first responder is good to follow, because Korean society has different standards on that. Plagiarism is done frequently even at the highest levels.

There have been scandals about it in the press. So, they do care, but it has been a widespread problem.

If you try to come down very hard on a student for it, you might get a backlash from the administration.

[yingwenlaoshi]

[typo]

No, don't ignore it. This may sound idealistic, but rampant plagiarism is one thing that I feel ESLers can impact a bit. That shit is wrong and should be put to light. Bring down the full force of shame on them. Say shit like, "in the west you'd be fired (expelled if you're talking to academic bound kids, which it sounds like it) and plagiarism is dishonorable.

Of all things I detest about korean society, condoning of plagiarism is near the top if not already there.

[bluelake]

Here's a simple online plagiarism checker:

http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/

[richardlang]

The students wrote essays about books they read in English. I think we'll go the route of having students write a similar essay in class. Googling each essay won't catch the people who had their essays written by someone else. A lot of our students in the essay contest spent time overseas.

In fact, it wasn't my suggestion to check essays. It was my department chief who is head of the book essay contest.

Once we gather the best essays, each of the English teachers, including myself, will use a rubric to calculate points given to each student. We usually staple over the students' names, so that teachers can't view them. Winning any contest in any school is a big deal, especially at my high school.

[Darkray16]

Best way, ask them a few questions about the essay(not the book, but opinion stated in the essay).

If they can answer, then that means they either wrote it, or read the essay, understood it, then copied it, which is more than you should expect from them.

[iggyb]

If you doubt the student wrote it, I'd bet a Google check would confirm it.

Doing it the way you mentioned is fine enough, but if it were me, I'd have to wonder how well an in class essay would match up to an out of class one even if written by the same student. If it's a contest that the students volunteered to write for - or even they all had to do it - the students who really want to win might have put in a good number of hours polishing the work which they can't do under the gun.

It's at least worth considering.

I know from my own experience as a freshman in college that my first drafts and the ones done in class, in my native language, generally sucked but I made high grades on those I could rewrite a few times before handing in.

I also agree with the other comment about how plagiarism is bad and something Korean society should reform more than they have so far, but I've seen enough examples of expat university teachers talking about having a hard time with their administration over passing people who didn't deserve it to say that you have to be careful how hard you want to punish a student for cheating.

If I found the student was using other people's work, I'd document it and then take it up with a Korean teacher involved and let them decide on the course of action to take...

[morrisonhotel]

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[Hyeon Een]

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