When I had my rude introduction to Thailand's cheating epidemic, I immediately started trying to root it out of my classrooms. My efforts met with mixed success, but I did have some victories and even had fun along the way after I got over my initial shock (and rage).

During my year-long here, I'd call roll both at the beginning and at the end of each of my 'smaller' classes. This allowed me to check both stragglers and those who disappeared during class without permission. In the larger classes this was futile, so I started tinkering with another facet of teaching--tests/exams.

I designed exams and tests which 'forced' cheaters to work at cheating and even made sure they learned something, be it a small speck, when they cheated.

I had the most fun meeting the cheating/cheater challenge by making multiple versions of exams and tests. This had my students pulling their hair out the first time I gave these! This showed me who really had the ability to get the job done and who were only cheating-dependent posers waiting on for some hard-working student to give them their latest 'fix'--and inflated exam/test grade.

Did all my efforts help? Probably, but not enough to make them more desirable than the number one 'superior' solution to the cheating problem in Asia--SEGREGATE STUDENTS BY ABILITY, NOT AGE.

Yes, if we started sticking 17-year-old students deficient in ability with eleven-year-old students who 'can do it', we'd all see improvements in a great big ol' hurry. Or we'd see much smaller classrooms because of students dropping out of English altogether. It'd make no difference to me. I prefer either or even both.

If I had MY way here in Thailand, I'd even go as far as to force students in Thailand's high schools to 'test into' English classes. When students were finished with one grade, they'd have to pass an exam to move to the next grade. They'd get two chances to pass that exam. If they couldn't, they'd be finished with English at the high school level forever.

THIS is what really needs to be done in Thailand, and probably through all of Asia as well. The archaic notion that EVERY student must be crammed into English classes needs to go the way of the do-do bird.

RT