Cheating 'you know whos'...

There are three main examinations in the typical life of an Oman Tourism College first year student; the placement test and the two end of semester exams.

This week sees the end of semester one exams which are split into six catergories: General English (reading,writing,grammar and listening), Speaking, English for Special Purposes, IT, Numeracy and French or German.
Once we have the results in, the students will be re-arranged a little before semester two where the pace picks up a bit for entry into the diploma course.

For teachers (aside from the massive amount of marking we have to do), it's 'spot the cheat' time; no easy feat in a huge hall with 230 students who have perfected the art of cheating over the years. The top five ways the students cheat are:

1. Copying from the person next to them.
2. Getting a much more intelligent friend to sit the exam (this only happens at the placement test before we know them obviously!).
3. Writing key information on body parts.
4. Writing key information on pieces of paper.
5. Hiding a bluetooth headset underneath their scarves (ladies only).

If a student can cheat without me noticing, hats off to them I say. Unfortunately, one of my Tour Guides decided to smuggle in notes via method 4 and we had no choice but to remove him from the hall and void his paper.

Silly Billy (or Hamed, as he's also known!).