ESL/American History

today's lesson: cheaters never prosper



today i taught esl (english as a second language) and american history. the assignment had a theme that corresponded with yesterday's holiday, martin luther king day. as a class, we went to the computer lab and the students were to research dr. martin luther king jr. and answer some questions about the man and the civil rights movement. naturally, the worksheet for the esl class was significantly easier to understand and find the answers. it involved questions such as "when and where was marting luther king born" and "what did rosa parks do and in what city" and things like that. despite the simple nature of the questions, many of the students decided that they would cheat, and copy off of other students in the class. there were about 10 students who did so. and despite their best efforts to keep it top secret by speaking in their native tongue, little did they know that many of their native words like "copiar" (copy) and "mas rapido" (faster) correspond very closely to words in portuguese, in which i am fluent. i knew exactly what was going on, and was excited to see what their results were.

they managed to get the birthdate and place of martin luther king, but after that it was all down hill.

rosa parks was famous for being the "mother of modern" which occured in "michighan"

when asked to cite three lines from the i have a dream speach, they all wrote "it was good because it was for freedom" (i was unable to locate this phrase anywhere in the speech)

and when asked why he was important, they all wrote the same response, word for word.

now, you may be thinking to yourselves, "leave them alone, jerk. they are learning a new language"... not so. this was the advanced class, which means they simply live in a bi lingual home, and are fluent in both spanish and english. also, wikipidia is available in spanish.

needless to say, they did not do very well on the assignment. and one wandered into a later class, and tried to give all the answers to another student. to which i responded "no es michighan"