The amount of cheating here makes me 
Even my youngest kids seems to think that cheating and school go together like bread and butter. What gives?
I have a question. Are you saying the kids are cheating by Taiwanese standards of what cheating means? BTW, I don’t know what these standards would be.
Come on! The Taiwanese are the most humble, self-effacing people on the planet. Steeped in honesty and integrity, they are paragons of virtue. Cheating? Impossible. Not part of their culture.
What gives? The acorn doesn’t fall from the tree. What do you expect?
[quote]The [color=#FF0000]National Taiwan Normal University [/color]was under fire yesterday from lawmakers who demanded an immediate [color=#FF0000]dismissal of its president for what they called lying and forgery of his credentials[/color]. . .
In related developments, a Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) lawmaker yesterday accused National Taiwan University (NTU) of sheltering [color=#FF0000]one of its associate professors, who was suspected of plagiarism in one of the articles she used for her promotion [/color]last year[/quote]
[quote]The [color=#FF0000]National Science Council (國科會) recently reported 23 cases of plagiarism involving some well-known scholars in Taiwan[/color], many of whom are still teaching at local universities or doing research work. . .
Liao did not reveal the names of those found plagiarizing, but said more than half once taught or are still teaching at national universities, including two at National Taiwan University and one each at Zhengzhi University, Sun Yat-sen University, and Tsing Hua University.[/quote]
[quote]The plagiarism scandal at the Chinese Culture University erupted in April when Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) and Lin Tai-hua (林岱樺), both Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, revealed that Lin Tsai-mei (林彩梅), then the [color=#FF0000]university’s chancellor, had allowed Su Tsui-yun (蘇翠芸), her advisee and also her daughter, to copy from Lin’s book in order to help Su finish her dissertation [/color]on business and management.
The two DDP lawmakers said that [color=#FF0000]90 of the 110 pages of Su’s dissertation were copied from Lin’s book verbatim.[/color]
Lin was forced to step down as chancellor under pressure from the university’s committee and the ministry of education, but she has stayed on at the university as the director of the school of business.
Su was stripped of her master’s degree.[/quote]
Just be sure to teach your own kids better and don’t get upset over things you can’t change.
My rule of test taking is simple: “look at your book and nowhere else.” It works well. Otherwise it would be chaos lol.
Is this really unique to the Taiwanese though? I kind of doubt it.
If I ever catch my students cheating, they have to do faxie (lines) in English and Chinese: “Cheating is lazy, dishonest, and unfair to the other students.” If the parents see the faxie, then the kids are in the doghouse all over again.
I’ve also learned that some little kids aren’t really “cheating” in the devious sense. They’re comparing. They want to know what the kid next to them wrote. I go a lot easier on the little ones - I tell them that I know they didn’t mean to cheat, but it still looks like cheating from where I’m standing. They usually catch on pretty quick.
Test scores are what determine class placement, university entrance, and job application here, so it makes perfect sense to cheat on them – it gets you a better life. And since you’re tested on things which are completely irrelevant to the skills you need, like memorizing poetry, it’s not like it makes any difference.
Blame the system.
Maoman those are good ideas.
I was teaching when to use "might have " and when to use “must have”. I explained the difference throughly and most of them got it.I gave them an example sentence: Timmy got 100 on the test. He _____________ studied hard.
All of my students told me that might have was the correct answer. We had a thorough discussion about it. Cheating, not studying, is the most probable cause of good grades is their conclusion.
Cheating. No dishonor in it at all here. It is a way of life.
What are the Taiwanese standars of what cheating means?
While doing activities that have a game of some kind, if they try to copy the other teams answers I make fun of it and give the other team extra points, or an extra throw of the dice/basketball/sticky ball. Saying something like “Oh my God. Billy’s cheating” and looking shocked gets the point across in a way that isn’t too embarrassing to the kid and lets them know it’s wrong without really punishing them - because after all, they’re probably doing it out of ignorance.
By the time they do tests, it’s ingrained in them not to cheat (in my classes at least).
Plenty of college students here, in my observation, have no qualms about copying other people’s work word for word…they don’t even know it’s wrong, and when I tell them not to do it they seem to reckon it must be a weird cultural quirk we Westerners have.
I’ve seen application essays with entire paragraphs cribbed verbatim from the websites of the universities they’re applying to.
I’ve seen couples applying to the same universities with exactly the same content in their essays and even recommendation letters.
I’ve seen sets of three recommendation letters, supposedly written independently by three different people, with the same wording in them.
I’ve seen paragraphs from magazine articles cut and pasted wholesale from websites. (Usually I find this when Googling an obscure phrase in the article.)
I’ve seen, in the middle of an essay, the verbatim contents of an academic paper abstract. (The sudden shift from active to passive voice and a corresponding shift from Chinglish to perfect English were a major tip-off, and this prompted me to investigate.)
They just don’t seem to think plagiarism is wrong, as long as they have the “right answer”.
I’ve been asked to write a recommendation letter for a student’s Taiwanese university teacher to sign and present as the teacher’s. 
I think this is an area that Forumosa could branch into: references and perhaps even online degrees in English / Waiguoren Studies.
This is pretty much standard procedure here.
Most professors can barely write in English, and many don’t seem to realize that part of their job description is the writing of recommendation letters.
And those who write Chinese letters for translation can’t break out of the Chinese mold of thinking (“The student was humble and respectful to her elders, filial to her parents, followed orders obediently without question, never skipped class, displayed impeccable moral conduct, sat in the front row, took clear notes and actively participated in extracurricular activities, so I gave her an A in my Quantum Mechanics class. As a specific example of a class project she did, she was part of a team in which she was responsible for gathering data and giving the final presentation, the results of which won accolades from her peers.”).
So in general, the professors ask the students to write recommendation letters, or to get someone else to write them, and as long as they agree with the content and sign it, it’s legit.
Ladies and Gentleman,
Being fed up with old institutions and having to actually show up for lectures, I have decided to make my own online university. It’s the ultimate cheat. Unlimited degrees and academic references. I’m accepting students and faculty. It’s an unrecognized university but it’s really good. Best of all, it’s free.
http://www.thewildeast.net/moodle/
Wild East University (WEU)
Our motto is: “you won’t get paid but you don’t have to pay”.
Join us soon at your location and convenience.
[quote=“Chris”]Plenty of college students here, in my observation, have no qualms about copying other people’s work word for word…they don’t even know it’s wrong, and when I tell them not to do it they seem to reckon it must be a weird cultural quirk we Westerners have.
I’ve seen application essays with entire paragraphs cribbed verbatim from the websites of the universities they’re applying to.
I’ve seen couples applying to the same universities with exactly the same content in their essays and even recommendation letters.
I’ve seen sets of three recommendation letters, supposedly written independently by three different people, with the same wording in them.
I’ve seen paragraphs from magazine articles cut and pasted wholesale from websites. (Usually I find this when Googling an obscure phrase in the article.)
I’ve seen, in the middle of an essay, the verbatim contents of an academic paper abstract. (The sudden shift from active to passive voice and a corresponding shift from Chinglish to perfect English were a major tip-off, and this prompted me to investigate.)
They just don’t seem to think plagiarism is wrong, as long as they have the “right answer”.[/quote]
Also: students copying from each other, and then changing the order of the examples or minor details, in order to cover their tracks.
And: for students unable to Google and copy an article in English, sometimes they will find something in Chinese and run it through machine translation software, presenting the output as their work. It’s really easy to tell MT output from Taiwan student output!
This is pretty much standard procedure here.
Most professors can barely write in English, and many don’t seem to realize that part of their job description is the writing of recommendation letters.
And those who write Chinese letters for translation can’t break out of the Chinese mold of thinking (“The student was humble and respectful to her elders, filial to her parents, followed orders obediently without question, never skipped class, displayed impeccable moral conduct, sat in the front row, took clear notes and actively participated in extracurricular activities, so I gave her an A in my Quantum Mechanics class. As a specific example of a class project she did, she was part of a team in which she was responsible for gathering data and giving the final presentation, the results of which won accolades from her peers.”).
So in general, the professors ask the students to write recommendation letters, or to get someone else to write them, and as long as they agree with the content and sign it, it’s legit.[/quote]
This is normal in Taiwan. It isn’t in the job description of a professor that one must write recommendation letters. They have little contact with their students, in general, and often have no idea who they are. BUT - universities in America and Canada expect personal letters of recommendation from one’s professors when applying for grad school. One Taiwanese friend of mine explained to me that professors in Taiwan just don’t do that. At my university in Canada, professors and students often had a friendly relationship, would go out drinking together, you might seem the professor at a party; and in any case generally know the upper-year students as individuals and are perfectly willing to write a recommendation. The relationship between a professor and a student at a Taiwanese university is not going to be friendly.
So what is the student supposed to do? The Western university expects something that is not normally offered in Taiwanese culture. Writing your own letter, or getting a foreign friend to write one, and then passing it off as from a professor is normal. The professors even prefer it - if you asked for a letter, he/she would rather you wrote it yourself and he/she would just sign it.
It’s the same in South Korea. One Korean friend looked at the application from an American university that wanted recommendation letters, and said that Korean professors just don’t do that. So he wrote some for himself, and I wrote some, and he got the professors to sign them.
This is, unfortunately, not limited to Taiwan. Just look at all the paper-for-sale sites in English.
I’ve failed plenty of students in several countries for just this sort of thing. Failing the course (with, depending on the country and university, official disciplinary action) is one of those things that nicely transcends language and culture.
I know a Taiwanese guy who handed in a printed wikipedia page as his final paper in a graduate level course. i couldn’t believe it. all the formatting was still there… the table of contents at the beginning, the awkward footnotes, etc.