Dr Zack,

This is very helpful. Thank you. How to utilize it in our situation is the question.

We are oral English teachers and so our exams are given in the form of an oral conversation with each students. We grade them on Comprehension, Pronunciation and Fluency.

The difficulty is that with some classes being extremely large (50) and many of those students not attending classes, the foreign teachers are faced with a sea of faces that are mostly unfamiliar to them except for the usual handful of actively enthusiastic students.

When exam time comes, students who have usually not attended classes come out of the woodwork to hopefully get some marks that will add to their overall score. If they don't pass ( and many of them speak and understand little or no English) they have to be re-examined and do make up classes. No one wants to do this if possible ... so they ask other students with better English to do the exam for them.

There are 2 English Major foreign teachers. we have classes of 30 and know our students. The other foreign teachers don't know them, let alone not know all of their own students. We only found out about what was happening by chance and by then it was too late to trace which students had pretended to be whom.

Knowing that it happens is a start. Letting the students know the foreign teachers know via the monitors is another step. In future, the good advice you have offered can be utilized should we come across anyone scamming during the next exams. Your advice sounds fair and reasonable.

Thanks again.
Rosalind