Cheating on Exams in the Iranian EFL Context

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating the status of cheating on exams in the Iranian EFL context. One hundred thirty two university students were surveyed to this end. They were selected through convenient sampling. The results indicated that cheating is quite common among the Iranian language students. The most important reasons for this behavior were found to be "not being ready for the exam", "difficulty of the exam", "lack of time to study" and "careless and lenient instructors". The study also indicated that the most common methods of cheating are "talking to the adjacent individuals", "copying from others' test papers", and "using gestures to get the answers from others". It was also found that the student's field of study, academic level, and occupational status had a significant effect on cheating whereas gender and marital status had no effect in this regard. Furthermore, it became clear that field of study and occupational status had a significant effect on students' attitude toward cheating whereas gender, academic level and marital status had no effect. Finally, the study indicated that age significantly correlated with cheating and attitude toward cheating.

I Did Cheating, Because… : A Phenomenological Study

“…In this regard, assignments not read and lack of care taken by the overseers during the exam was mentioned among the reasons for cheating. This finding concurs with similar findings reported in the literature such as the relationship between doing assignments by copying from the internet and some instructor-based variables (Ersoy, 2014;Ersoy & Özden, 2011) and irresponsible behaviors of overseers (Ahmadi, 2012).…”

“…Bu kapsamda ödevlerin okunmaması, gözetmenlerin sınavlar sürecince özenli olmamasının kopya çekme nedenleri arasında belirtildiği görülmüştür. Araştırmanın bu sonucu öğretmen adaylarının internetten kopya odev yapmaları ile oğretim elemanı kaynaklı kimi değişkenlerin ilişkili olduğu (Ersoy, 2014;Ersoy ve Özden, 2011) ve gözetmenlerin sorumlu davranmadığı (Ahmadi, 2012) bicimindeki araştırma sonuçlarıyla da örtüşmektedir.…”

“…Bu kapsamda, cinsiyet (Ahmadi, 2012;Keçeci, Bulduk, Oruç ve Çelik, 2011;Lin ve Wen, 2007;Molnar ve Kletke, 2012;Whitley, Nelson ve Jones, 1999), genel not ortalaması (Iyer ve Eastman, 2006;Olafson, Schraw, Nadelson, Nadelson ve Kehrwald, 2013), sınıf düzeyi/yaş (Finn ve Frone, 2004;Lupton, Chapman ve Weiss, 2000;Szabo ve Underwood, 2004) ve öğrenim görülen program (Akbulut, Uysal, Odabaşı ve Kuzu, 2008b;Eret ve Ok, 2011) değişkenlerinin kopya çekme davranışları ile ilişkisi incelenmiştir. Ancak bu değişkenlerle kopya çekme arasındaki ilişkiyi inceleyen araştırmaların sonuçlarının tutarlı olmadığı görülmektedir.…”

English Learning Achievement and EFL Learners’ Cheating Attitudes and Cheating Behaviors

“…9, No. 2;2016 Because of the importance of academic integrity in education and the pervasiveness of cheating behaviors among students of all ages and levels, recent researchers have shown interest in investigating the reasons behind the tendency of students to cheat (Ahmadi, 2012;Murdock & Anderman, 2006). It is believed that preventive techniques cannot be fruitful if real reasons of cheating are not examined and follow up actions are not appropriately taken.…”

Plagiarism policies in Iranian university TEFL teachers’ syllabuses: an exploratory study

“…Moreover, the review of the related literature indicated that although many of those issues have been investigated in Iranian higher education contexts (e.g. Ahmadi, 2012Ahmadi, , 2014Amiri, Khamesan and Ayati, 2012;Khoshsaligheh, Mehdizadkhani and Keyvan, 2017;Rezanejad and Rezaie;, the issue of how Iranian TEFL professors' views towards plagiarism is reflected in their course syllabuses has been ignored. In order to get a better picture of the phenomena, the following research questions were addressed: …”