How to Prevent Cheating: A Practical Guide for ESL and EFL Teachers

After calling a student into my office, this conversation ensued:
Me (handing a student back her paper): This essay was taken directly off of the internet.  Why did you plagiarize? 
Student (looking at her paper and a copy of the website): I didn’t plagiarize, I asked my cousin to write this essay and I really don’t know where she got it from. 

Me (in my head):  ARGGGGG, that is still cheating!  What do you not understand about this????

I have worked in schools where cheating was rampant and I have worked in schools where it was almost non-existent.  What I learned is that cheating is often a cultural thing.  Different cultures view “cheating” very differently and the culture of cheating can vary greatly from country to country, from school to school and from classroom to classroom.  

The traditional approach to combating cheating has been to monitor the students more and more closely. Teachers make multiple versions of tests, make students sit in isolation, make them keep their hands where we can see them, generally treat them as potential criminals. This is a terrible thing for teaching and learning because it pits teachers and students against each other.  We are no longer a team, striving to help each other but rather adversaries looking for ways to outwit each other in a game to win points.  And just as arms races cause countries to invest large amounts of resources into making the planet significantly less safe, schools that devote large amounts of time and other resources to policing students, ultimately make the learning environment very much less effective. 

To put a stop to cheating, we need to really understand what motivates students to cheat or not to. 

Why Students Cheat

1. They cheat because we have taught them that the goal of education is points and ranking, not skills and knowledge.

When I think about it, attitudes about the value of knowledge and skills and the reasons we cheat extend far beyond the classroom. In many ways school is a reflection of our society as a whole but it is not merely a reflection, it also helps to form society. What people learn from school they take with them when they graduate and it becomes a part of society as a whole. Many, if not most, of the things we learn at school are not informational in nature but rather are lessons about how to behave in groups, what is expected from us by our superiors, and how to fit in to society.

These are things we teach to our students by using the systems we use in teaching. For example, we teach students that the value of learning is not the knowledge itself, but the points that can be earned by demonstrating that knowledge. It seems a subtle difference but it is an important one. By taking the motivation to learn away from the skills and knowledge and putting it onto something more abstract like points, we separate students from the desire to better understand the world, an inner desire, and we redirect that motivation into getting an external reward, points, grades and rankings.

This in essence is what we do in our working lives as well. Instead of being motivated to work in order to improve the quality of life on Earth, we are now working for money. Our value no longer depends on what we contribute to society, but now depends on how many dollars, yen or Euros we have in our bank accounts. It therefore no longer matters what we are doing or what the consequences are for what we are doing, it only matters that we have money. It is especially important, that we have more money than the people around us. 

What can we teachers do about it?

I don’t know about you, but only on rare occasions do the institutes of learning I have worked for not asked me to grade my students.  Seeing that I am required to give my students grades and they will naturally be comparing their grades against each other, how do I change the focus of my class away from points and competition and onto skills and knowledge?  

• Give students the opportunity to redo assignments after you give them feedback on it. This gives students the chance to use your feedback to improve their work, upping their skills and knowledge.  It shows students that points are not fixed in stone and hard work can actually make a difference right here, right now, on this assignment or test.
• Allow students to choose what they want to work on  how they want to work on it, and how they would like to be evaluated.  This seems like an impossible task when you have lots of students in your class but it really isn’t.  If you give students learning menus they they can select the specific skills they want to focus.  Then when you evaluate them, give them a menu of options they would like you to look at.  You can of course insist that they be evaluated on certain important things but you can also allow them to draw your attention to what they are proud of. 
• Give students points and recognition for helping each other.  This doesn’t mean that they let other students copy their work, it means they get rewarded for teaching other students how to do things.  All too often the top students are competing against each other to be the smartest, fastest, most detail oriented, original person in the class, while the struggling students try not to show anyone that they are struggling.  Why not ask your students, both struggling and not struggling, to share whatever skills and talents they have with each other.  My daughter was in a strict elementary school in Tokyo a few years ago and she was struggling to fit in.  She could have helped her classmates learn English but the teacher never asked her to. There was a boy in her class that was constantly disruptive but she loved him because he made her laugh even on tough days.  Wouldn’t it have been nice if she could have gotten some credit for brining her linguistic talents to class, and her classmate could have gotten credit for brightening her day. 

2. They cheat because they are desperate, if they don’t pass this test/assignment, they are failures!

High-stakes testing is a part of students’ lives in so many parts of the world.  If you don’t pass this test, you won’t get into this high school, this university, this graduate program, this job.  Our worth is boiled down, quite brutally, into a single number.  You are in the 95% and you are in the 45%, that is where you stand and who you are.  Thankfully, now that I am older, I realize that I am much more than a number, but back when I was a student, that was a big part of my identity.  

What can teachers do about this?

• Don’t give high-stakes tests in your class.  You can’t do much about standardized tests but you do have control of how many assignments you yourself give.  Make sure that you are evaluating your students on a wide variety of things like homework, class work, quizzes, presentations, projects, and self-directed work.  This way students won’t feel like they have to cheat to pass if they aren’t “good at tests”.  
• Make sure your students know you value them, not their grades.  Focus on what students have done well.  Instead of consistently praising the student who got the highest score on something, praise an idea you found interesting, something beautiful like an eye-opening metaphor or wonderful handwriting.  Let them make you laugh and appreciate all that makes them human. 
• Practice the test format with the students as well as the content.  Often we review course content with students before the test but rarely do we show them exactly how they are going to be evaluated and let them practice before the test.  If you are going to make your exam short answer, have your students practice short answers.  Show them what a passing answer looks like and what a failing answer looks like.  Do the same if you are going to give an essay exam, fill in the blank, multiple choice or oral exam.  I encourage you to ask your students to do more than one thing on an exam, that way it doesn’t favor students who are particularly skilled in one area or another.  

 ​3.  They cheat because they have seen other people cheating and getting away with it.

As I mentioned earlier, cheating is a culture and it varies widely from group to group.  I know that when I am standing at an intersection waiting for the light to change with a group of other people, i am much more likely to cross the street against the light if I see even just one other person do it.  After all, it is hot/cold/windy/rainy/whatever and I don’t want to be the only chump stuck waiting on the other side of the street.  I justify it in my mind because that other person did it too, it is only natural.  In Japan, on the other hand, I stay and wait for that light because everyone else is waiting and I know that if I cross I am going to be silently judged.  

So how do I get my whole class to reject cheating?

• Have students take a verbal and written oath before they take a test.  I used to teach at a university in which cheating on exams was the norm.  Proctors prowled the isles and testing days took on a military aspect.  I hated this, I loved my students, most of whom I had taught for several classes over two years.  Instructors were jaded and told me students were just inherently dishonest.  I didn’t think so, I knew these people and they were not dishonest, they just thought cheating was normal.  So on the spur of the moment, I wrote the following sentences on the board. “I really want to do well on this test but my honor is more important than my score.  I promise not to cheat and not to help anyone else cheat.”  I asked them to write it word for word on the top of their test and sign it.  When they handed in the test I asked them to look me in the eye and say “I did not cheat.”  Then next week, I asked my students if swearing this oath made any difference.  My theory that they were not dishonest held true.  The ones who cheated told me they cheated, the ones who never cheat told me that too, and a sizable number told me they had planed on cheating and were tempted but didn’t because they didn’t want to lie to me.  
• Have open and honest conversations with your students about cheating.  By this, I don’t mean lecturing them on the evils of cheating, I mean have them talk with you and with each other about how cheating makes them feel, how it makes you feel, what effects does it have on the school as a whole, what affect does it have on society?  Ask students to think about possible alternatives to cheating, and ask them how you can help make them not want to cheat. 

​When students cheat, here are a few things to keep in mind.

• Teachers can have a big impact on cheating in their classrooms but not in the ways they usually think.
• One of the most important things a teacher can do to discourage cheating is to have a good, respectful relationship with the students. Students don’t want to disappoint teachers whom they like. If teachers take the time to get to know their students, create solid bonds with them, and show them that they like them both as individuals, and as a group, students will hesitate to risk that relationship by cheating.
• ​If the course is structured in such a way that a single test or assignment can make or break a student’s grade, they are more likely to cheat. If students know that they will be assessed on many different things and that no one thing will cause them to fail, they don’t feel such a need to cheat.
• Properly preparing students for exams helps them to feel more confident in their knowledge so they don’t feel that they need to cheat as much. Making sure that students have reviewed the material the week before the test, showing them the different formats you are going to use on the test and letting them practice also helps.​

How do you handle it when you catch your students cheating?  Share your experiences in the comments below!