cheating

While giving finals this year I encountered a surprising amount of cheating. A lot of it was discussing the questions with their classmates after taking the test (which I kind of expected). This led to some entertaining answers. When I gave the test, I would say "OK" whether the student got the correct answer or not. Sometimes I would notice a trend where a few minutes after a student got a question wrong, several students in a row would get the same question wrong with the exact same answer. For example, when defining the word "siblings" a group of students answered "brothers and sisters (at this point I thought they were doing well, but then they continued) whose mother dies" (I think they kind of confused it with step-siblings or something).
I made two versions of the final to try and eliminate some of the cheating. One test had a picture of the pilgrims and indians having the first thanksgiving and the other test had a picture of three little children trick or treating in costumes. I would ask the students to tell me some things about the picture. I had a few students, when given the second version (with the trick or treaters), instantly begin to tell me about Thanksgiving and that the people were eating turkey, etc. Then the students would walk away from the test looking confident and ready to whisper that answer to the next student.
My favorite catch was when one student was waiting in line and I saw him looking at a small piece of paper and quietly repeating the four words that I had on my test. I took the paper from him and saw that he had the words written phonetically in Chinese Characters so he could pronounce them. Sometimes the English teachers would stay in the classroom to help keep the kids quiet which helped a lot.