B1+ Reading Test

I think [wpcmtt id=”6858″]cheating[/wpcmtt] has always existed and always will. In my day – a long time ago! – some students used to cheat in tests at school by hiding notes in their books or writing things on their hands. If they wanted good marks for their homework, they copied their friend’s work, or asked their parents to help them out. It was [wpcmtt id=”6859″]risky[/wpcmtt] because if your teachers found out you had cheated they would fail you, so you wouldn’t pass the exam at all – but some people thought it was worth the [wpcmtt id=”6860″]risk[/wpcmtt]. I never cheated – I was too scared I’d get found out!

I think people do still cheat at school or university but the whole thing has become a lot more high tech now. It seems that although the Internet has brought enormous [wpcmtt id=”6861″]benefits[/wpcmtt], like giving students [wpcmtt id=”6862″]access[/wpcmtt] to unlimited information, it’s also created a highly successful industry for helping students to cheat very effectively. There are two main ways that students can use the Internet to help them get better marks at school. Firstly, they can access information and simply copy whole [wpcmtt id=”6863″]chunks[/wpcmtt] of [wpcmtt id=”6864″]articles[/wpcmtt] or reports into their own homework assignments and [wpcmtt id=”6865″]pretend[/wpcmtt] it’s their own work. Secondly – and I think this is a more worrying development – there are now specialist websites that supply original essays [wpcmtt id=”6866″]on demand[/wpcmtt]. This means that a student can actually send money to a website to provide an essay with a certain title. The website employs a qualified writer to write the essay but the teacher marking it doesn’t know where the work has come from and believes the student has written it him or herself. Research has shown that some university students are prepared to pay up to £300 for a good essay. It’s completely dishonest.

I’m a secondary school teacher and I know that teachers have been aware of the problem of students copying information from the Internet for a while now. Most of us use software to find work that’s been copied from Internet sources. However, this only detects chunks that are copied exactly, not paragraphs that have been edited, or specially [wpcmtt id=”6867″]commissioned[/wpcmtt] work. Teachers mostly rely on their knowledge of their students’ abilities and the type of work they normally produce. They have to be alert to new types of phrasing or style that suddenly appear in a student’s writing – this is often an [wpcmtt id=”6868″]indication[/wpcmtt] that it’s not all their own writing. Teachers can also scan the Internet for similar essay titles and check whether there are any that the student may have copied, but this is [wpcmtt id=”6869″]time-consuming [/wpcmtt]and not very [wpcmtt id=”6870″]efficient[/wpcmtt]. Another way to [wpcmtt id=”6871″]discourage[/wpcmtt] copying is to give personalised [wpcmtt id=”6872″]essay[/wpcmtt] titles such as, ‘[wpcmtt id=”6874″]Compare[/wpcmtt] the [wpcmtt id=”6873″]plot[/wpcmtt] of … with your own experiences.’ This means each student has to give a personal answer. Despite all of these techniques though, I think it’s [wpcmtt id=”6875″]inevitable[/wpcmtt] that the lazier student will always try to find an easy way around hard work, whereas the more [wpcmtt id=”6876″]conscientious [/wpcmtt]student will do his own. It’s human nature.

I’ve read that [wpcmtt id=”6877″]experts[/wpcmtt] say the way to eliminate cheating in schools is to start teaching students from as young as 11 years old the dangers of copying work. A lot of young people don’t really think about the [wpcmtt id=”6878″]long term[/wpcmtt] effects of not doing the work themselves – they just want to get the assignment finished as quickly as possible. Cheating is [wpcmtt id=”6879″]pointless[/wpcmtt] because you don’t learn anything from it. Homework assignments [wpcmtt id=”6880″]are supposed to [/wpcmtt]help you remember and process what you have learned and present the information in a [wpcmtt id=”6881″]structured[/wpcmtt] way. If you don’t go through the process of planning, [wpcmtt id=”6882″]drafting[/wpcmtt] and editing your work, you’ll never learn to do this.