Problems with cheating

[eievui]

How do you deal with cheating? Warnings? Automatic zeroes? Do you let it slide when it's homework or not? What kind of consequences do you give?

Any and all advice welcome. Thanks in advance.

[OdysseyOfNoises]

Always consult with the particular JTE you're working with before doing anything regarding cheating. A lot of the time it won't be your call to make.

[word]

Always consult with the particular JTE you're working with before doing anything regarding cheating. A lot of the time it won't be your call to make.

word

Some Japanese teachers (in my experience) do not apparently view what we would consider "cheating" to be bad at all. I had a JTE last year who seated the lower-performing kids next to the higher-performing kids and happily allowed the lower-performing kids to copy their quizzes/tests from the kids next to them. "Their grades are improving!"

[coop52]

As long as it's not a test, no one really cares about copying. They usually give out the answer sheets with homework knowing full well that many of the kids will just copy it.

[dhsensei]

Cheating can happen in a number of ways. Copying from friends, taking huge chunks of computer translated Japanese and passing it off as their own English, having juku teachers write it for them...
However, I've not seen cheating happen in tests. Especially the ones that all schools take at specific times.

Any time I find something in work I mark, I make sure to bring it to the JTE's attention. Sometimes it results in lowered score, sometimes nothing. Usually it's just 2 students with exactly the same content. Sometimes, this might be actually legit though. Having students write about their weekend will probably get multiple responses of 'I slept. I did my homework. I was tired.' Doesn't mean they all copied each other though.

Also, with homework assignments, are you sure it was stated to be 'individual work'? Maybe it's a rule that, unless stated, homework can be done in groups.

[Namisuke]

In some cases, ALTs are put in charge of marking and are given full power of the situation. I have had this happen to me where students copy work word for word from the internet (which is so obvious, especially when multiple kids copy the same site...). What I do is print out the site page they copied, attach it to their work, and give them no grade. If you start rewarding those that don't do any work, others will think it is okay. If JTEs are allowing it, you can always hint suggestions on alternative ways to deal with it.

I get similar problems with students plopping whole paragraphs into translators. In that case I write that I don't understand it, that it looks like it was put into a translator, and push for them to make their own sentences.

[bRadO808]

How do you deal with cheating? Warnings? Automatic zeroes? Do you let it slide when it's homework or not? What kind of consequences do you give?

Any and all advice welcome. Thanks in advance.

It really depends on the exact type of "cheating"... Like others have said, things like copying homework answers are generally not considered cheating in this country.

[hanafubuki]

This is a great thread. Where I grew up, cheating/copying can get you expelled, not to mention it will leave a bad mark on your record, so it's very serious business. I was shocked and appalled when I got to college and realized people I knew were copying each others' answers from their Japanese workbooks and things like that. I personally have no tolerance for copying/cheating, so I know that if I come across it in one of my classes, I will be very disappointed and sure to talk to my JTE to find out what I can do about it.

[Cytrix]

I imagine you'll be able to do very little about it because you're not the teacher, you're only the assistant. If the JTE allows it to happen, there's nil you can do.

[byakko]

Always consult with the particular JTE you're working with before doing anything regarding cheating. A lot of the time it won't be your call to make.

Agreed. ALWAYS.

I was shocked to find that in my schools, cheating in many forms seems to be a totally acceptable, everyday practice. The JTEs seem to be aware but complacent. It isn`t seen as a problem.

Personally, I see it as a problem. Despite attending large, well-funded middle-class schools with quality teachers, most of my students aren`t learning enough to pass any but the lowest high school entrance exam. They`re coddled through junior high (passing every grade regardless of whether they do one shred of homework or classwork), and then BAM! At the end of their third year, for the first time, they encounter a test they can`t cheat through, and it has actual repercussions.

So I want to crack down on it. But it`s just not my place. I can`t change this HUGE aspect of classroom culture. So I placate myself by giving students stern looks or mild reprimands when I see flagrant cheating. Does it work? Probably not. But I feel a little better. And if by some miracle there`s a lazy student to whom my approval is meaningful enough to prompt putting away the answer sheet (at least for one assignment), it might be helping after all.

[AmberBear]

I laughed at my students when they were told there summer homework does not come with answers. I am glad they don't, too.

But isn't even plagiarism ok here in Japan?

[Nicky_FukuiPA]

I talked to my JTEs about this ahead of time to make sure we had a policy in place (I'm an experienced teacher back home, so I KNEW this problem would come up pretty quickly).

I made it known to all the students that, if I say they could work in pairs or groups, sharing answers was fine. If I said that it was individual work, there would be no cheating. For a few take home essays that would be graded, I found a few students would still copy (maybe 2 pairs or groups of students within 9 classes, so not too bad). I would deal with it by not putting a grade on the essays and talking to the JTE before class. Then, after class we would both talk to the students and tell them that we were disappointed. The students would then have a chance to do the work again, losing 1 letter grade.

At home, I used to give automatic F's for cheating, but copying is much more accepted here, so I found that giving a more mild punishment was necessary. Very few of the students ever copied again after they got in trouble, though, so I guess the mild punishment was enough.

[Sakurabloom]

Yea I'm also really shocked with cheating in Japan. Plagiarism just doesn't seem to exist here. I think William is spot on when he said that the focus is more on getting the original, textbook answer. It seems to be more important than the students actually thinking for themselves!

I mark all of the school exams at my high school and last week most of the exams were just copies of each other. I mentioned to my JTE who looked at me like I was crazy and told me I had no right to take off marks. She was actually genuinly shocked that I even thought of this as cheating. It's a shame, as that class have a very high level of English and I can think of no other reason for the copying other than sheer laziness. They definitely have the ability, but if i was a student and it was okay for me to make one A quality essay with my friends why would I bother thinking for myself? I can't say I blame them but it's certainly not going to have a positive effect on their English skills.

I was also really shocked recently as one of my JTEs who has the worst English I've ever heard handed me an essay she needed checked. She needs to pass this essay to become a teacher so it's pretty important. Anyway, the essay was her opinion on how to motivate students in class but instead of giving her own opinion she found a thesis on the Internet, which was written in very elevated English by a clearly very talented writer who was a native speaker of English. And she copied the thesis word for word but instead of referencing or quoting it she just put 'I think I should... (insert thesis).' What was worse was that the bits she'd added in were just terrible, I mean, elementary school level English with poor spelling, writing homework as 'homeworkses' and all other manner of just awful, awful English. This juxtaposition of very high level English and elementary school grammar mistakes just left me feeling so uncomfortable about the whole cheating/plagiarism thing.

But yea, if that's the way it is in Japan I guess there isn't much we can do as ALTs other than to suggest better ways to handle such situations. It feels so wrong to me but unfortunately, we just don't have the authority to do anything about it.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

I'm always tempted in situations like that (i.e. students copying) to give 1 set of marks for the piece out, and give the rest zeroes...and have every student who submitted the same piece janken to decide who gets the marks.

[Musashi]

Always consult with the particular JTE you're working with before doing anything regarding cheating. A lot of the time it won't be your call to make.

word

Some Japanese teachers (in my experience) do not apparently view what we would consider "cheating" to be bad at all. I had a JTE last year who seated the lower-performing kids next to the higher-performing kids and happily allowed the lower-performing kids to copy their quizzes/tests from the kids next to them. "Their grades are improving!"

That's what I was thinking too. It's not heating if the teacher doesn't care. I remember it used to bug me at first but after 3-4years I find you get less bothered by it. :p