Does this counts as cheating?

[hopeforfaith]

Say if I looked at some past papers for one subject and teacher chose that exact question during an exam and I memorize the answers out, is that cheating?

 

[PerfectTiming]

There are lot of things you don’t specify so there are a few different scenarios.

1. If you didn’t know that particular question was going to be on the exam then you did nothing wrong. Taking past papers is a very useful revision tool. You just got lucky.
2. If the teacher told you that exam was going to include that question then again that is legitimate.
3. If you found the exam question through some illicit means, such as stealing, the yes that is cheating.

 

[DavidFilmer]

My wife was a medical major. In one lab class, the students dissected fetal pigs. The students were all instructed not to discuss their pigs with each other, because those pigs would be used in the final exam (with numbered pins stuck into various parts for identification). My wife’s pig had several abnormalities (especially regarding the bronchial artery).

My wife’s pig was probably 25% of the exam - it had LOTS of pins stuck into abnormal places. Of course, she know all of those answers (while other students looked on with perplexed expressions).

Sometimes you just get lucky.

 

[Joan_M]

When I was in secondary (high) school in Ireland many moons ago my Irish language teacher researched the past papers and came up with a list of 5 essay titles that she thought were possible for the exam. She gave us a mock exam with these 6 essay titles.

Lo and behold, when I received the essay paper in the actual exam 4 of those titles were on the paper and I had done one of them in the mock exam! I got a distinction in that paper!

No one cheated. The teacher used her powers of observation and she was 80% correct. That’s one of the uses of past papers.

 

[AthenaC]

My wife was a medical major. In one lab class, the students dissected fetal pigs. The students were all instructed not to discuss their pigs with each other, because those pigs would be used in the final exam (with numbered pins stuck into various parts for identification). My wife’s pig had several abnormalities (especially regarding the bronchial artery).

My wife’s pig was probably 25% of the exam - it had LOTS of pins stuck into abnormal places. Of course, she know all of those answers (while other students looked on with perplexed expressions).

Sometimes you just get lucky.

Side topic, but this reminds me of a funny story. In our high school AP Biology class, we had something similar, but we did cats. We had to answer questions from the teacher one-on-one for our exam. The one question he asked everyone was “Is it male or female? How do you know?”

Anyway, we had this one bubbly cheerleader in the class (not intended to be a dumb cheerleader stereotype - this class was challenging enough that if you weren’t pretty smart, you would fail. So this girl was at least pretty smart.). She decided that the formaldehyde smelled awful. And she was right - the entire school knew when the Biology classes were dissecting something because the ENTIRE second floor could smell it, as well as a good portion of the first floor. So she decided to bring in her peach-scented body spray and spray it on the cat …

The resulting smell was SO awful - it was the worst perversion of peach scent I have ever experienced. So we learned our lesson - as awful as the formaldehyde smells, just deal with it. The alternative is much, much worse.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

Side topic, but this reminds me of a funny story. In our high school AP Biology class, we had something similar, but we did cats. We had to answer questions from the teacher one-on-one for our exam. The one question he asked everyone was “Is it male or female? How do you know?”

Anyway, we had this one bubbly cheerleader in the class (not intended to be a dumb cheerleader stereotype - this class was challenging enough that if you weren’t pretty smart, you would fail. So this girl was at least pretty smart.). She decided that the formaldehyde smelled awful. And she was right - the entire school knew when the Biology classes were dissecting something because the ENTIRE second floor could smell it, as well as a good portion of the first floor. So she decided to bring in her peach-scented body spray and spray it on the cat …

The resulting smell was SO awful - it was the worst perversion of peach scent I have ever experienced. So we learned our lesson - as awful as the formaldehyde smells, just deal with it. The alternative is much, much worse.

:yup:

Never tried to disguise the smell of formaldehyde but I swear I can still re-create that smell in my brain just by thinking about high-school biology class…

GAG

 

[1ke]

Say if I looked at some past papers for one subject and teacher chose that exact question during an exam and I memorize the answers out, is that cheating?

How, exactly, would it be cheating to review the papers that the teacher gave back to you?

 

[EasterJoy]

Say if I looked at some past papers for one subject and teacher chose that exact question during an exam and I memorize the answers out, is that cheating?

If you do not study materials that are forbidden or have advance knowledge of the exam that the instructor did not intend and other students don’t have, it is not cheating.

If you go out and study every exam you find, the questions are going to start looking very familiar. That is OK.

It is a little questionable whether teachers ought to allow themselves to “plagiarize” questions written by other teachers or to re-use their own exam questions knowing that students will have access to past exams, but that is another question. I always thought it a little cheap to let the students look at past exams and then put one of those exact questions on the current exam, but maybe that’s just me.