Top 10 best excuses for cheating

All of these excuses are real and from my classes (unless noted otherwise as with the guest contribution or excuses found on Twitter).

10. "We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat." Not from my class rather the chant at the recent Gaokao riot.

9. "I was seeing how far he got so I could pace myself." When I give tests I have a gigantic countdown on the board and make sure to verbally give reminders (You should be halfway through by now, etc.), so, this one doesn't fly for me.

8.

#ExcusesForCheating How dare you excuse me of cheating on this test. I was just practicing dramatic head turns. I might be on a soap opera.
— BenJAMMIN Sprengeler (@ben_sprengeler2) October 23, 2012

I love the creativity of this one. I know it is two years old, but still awesome.

7.

#ExcusesForCheating you didn't get a chance to study for your test because you were busy saving the world from a zombie apocalypse.
— Brianna Lucey (@BriannaLucey) October 23, 2012

Again! If a student at least can make me smile, I'll be less likely to take the test away.

6. "Yolo" - This one comes from Lillie  The "You only live once," mantra is often used now by teenagers with no other valid excuse.

5. "I just got nervous." Nerves can be a serious problem. It is one reason I like to give different tests. That way if a student gets nervous fidgeting around it is OK.

4. "I wasn't cheating; I was just making sure they were right." How kind of you.

3. "I was stretching." There's stretching, and there's blatantly looking at your neighbor's desk. Nice try though.

2. "I was making sure my answer was right." Well, this is more believable than number 4, it is still considered cheating.

and my ultimate favorite

1. "But teacher I don't know any of the answers." Oh...well why didn't you say so. In that case of course you can look at your neighbor's paper.

How to prevent cheating during tests? This post on cheating during tests  has lots of suggestions!

What about you? What's the most creative excuse your students ever gave you when you saw them trying to cheat during an exam.

Confusing Words 1

STRIPPING STRIPES
The first day of class in the Spring semester we played a review game covering everything they should have learned from their class in the fall. One of the queries was as follows:Combine the following sentences:

The cat lives on campus. The cat has stripes.

I look over and see one group talking. They aren't using Spanish (YAY) but one student in the group is visibly confused and begins to mime whirling something over her head. Her classmates quickly laugh and shake their heads, "No... not strip! Stripes" and then they mime drawing stripes on their arms.Important distinction.

If your students need a reminder it may be a good time to cover spelling rules. The "magic e" makes the i says it's own name (long vowel). Without the  "magic e" the i can't make its own name (short vowel)

SWEET SWEAT
My students were writing opinion essays on business practices. One student had come to me after class for some advice about his essay against sweat shops. 

First let's start with praise. He correctly differentiated between sweat and sweet (which is something I see native speakers mess up sometimes). 

You can remember the spelling a few different ways.  Some people remember HEAT makes you SWEAT. Others that MEAT is not SWEET (so meat and swee
t use different vowels).

Even though my student got that part right, he did make a small mistake with one of his supporting ideas.

TASTE TEST
"An example of the horrible conditions of sweat shops is that the women are fired if they are found pregnant. To make sure they are not hiding their pregnancy the sweat shop tastes women to see if they are pregnant."

After I read this I smiled. "So did they lick the workers to see if they were pregnant?" 

He was shocked by the question, but quickly figured out that taste and test were in fact different words.

MEET THE MEAT To end, this one wasn't in my class but a blog comment on an earlier post prompted me to add it.

  Does anyone else think of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy when students mix these up?

I am starting to collect commonly missed words, so let me know if you need a visual to help you and/or your students in the comments, by twitter or Facebook.

I am not an artist (my class and their troubles with my visuals)

The other day a student asked which "shit" we were going over.

Recognizing this as a chance to review some minimal pairs (and correct an embarrassing mistake) I said, "We are going over the homework shEEt, remember that shit means something else." I grabbed my marker as some students laughed and explained what shit meant to those who didn't get it.

Then I made my way over to the board, "It's like ship or sheep"

And I draw a ship (to which all students nod and I even get a few murmers or "barco"): I repeat the English word and sound: "Ship"

Then I draw the beautiful sheep, to which one student says, "Sheep means like cloudy?"

Everyone laughs at my sheep as I try to defend it, "It isn't a cloud it has a head...and legs"

To which the student replied, "I thought it was raining"

At this point I just have to conceed my art is not the best. "Fine. OK. I am no artist, but just remember a shIp is not shEEp and a shIt is NOT a shEEt."

There is lots of stuff online to help you help your class with minimal pairs. When we studied minimal pairs earlier to help with the TOEFL. We used this worksheet which worked well.

ESL handouts also offers a worksheet which makes students listen carefully to George Michael's, "Careless Whispers"

If your students still struggle with minimal pairs there are lots of fun activities to do in class. My favorite website for home study is: http://www.shiporsheep.com/

If you prefer books then you're lucky. When I took my CELTA and were my go to books for minimal pair and overall pronunciation help!

The trouble with suffixes

June 4th my students had their first Partial Exam. Since we started class with the test we ended it with a pretty easy suffix and prefix activity. We went over some suffixes(ship, ful, etc.) and prefixes (hetero, arch, etc.) and then I gave them a bunch of root words: friend, bishop, chamber, sex, etc. I paused before writing sex on the board, but I wanted something that would go easily with hetero.

The assignment was to come up with as many words as they could combining the root words, prefixes and suffixes.

I told them that we would go over the answers at the end, and if they weren't 100% certain it was a word just guess! It was mainly important that they came up with new meanings.

As they are making their lists I get a lot of, "Teacher is ________ a word" to which I responded, "We'll go over them at the end. Just guess!" Class continued, but I kept getting the same question. In the end I started abbreviating my answer to, "maybe"

I get the question from a group of boys,
Students: "Teacher is _____ a word?"
Me: "Maybe"
Student A: "She said maybe. That means yes"

Really guys? Maybe means yes?

Me: "I am not sure what girls you have dated, but that's not how it works" 

They were amused and finally stopped asking!

They continued working on the list and one of my sweetest most hardworking students asks, "Teacher... is sexship a word?"

It is on Urbandictionary, and I've seen it on twitter, but it has yet to become mainstreamed. I just quietly asked her "what type of relationships do you normally have?"

She turned bright red, "no no, teacher not me"