Free English Lesson! Topic: Cheating, Lying, and Stealing! ⚖️👫🏌️ (Lesson Only)

Well, hello and welcome to

this English lesson about cheating.

More broadly, this is a lesson on lying

and cheating and a little bit on stealing.

In English, we often use all three words together.

They mean slightly different things.

But people who lie, cheat, and

steal are not very nice people.

Although I dare say most of you at one point

in your life maybe cheated on something in school.

Maybe.

I'm not saying you did, but it's possible.

Human beings like to sometimes take the easy way.

Sometimes they like to, instead of doing it the

way you're supposed to, they like to cheat a

little bit or take a little shortcut.

I'll talk about both of those words in just a

moment, but welcome to this English lesson about cheating.

I noticed the picture is covering

the letter G just slightly.

Sorry about that.

I should have fixed that.

But I think you can tell that it ends in a g.

So welcome to this English lesson about cheating.

To cheat.

So this is a very broad term.

The verb to cheat can be used to

refer to a number of different things.

Probably the most common for me would be to think

about a student who cheats on a test or a

student at school that cheats on their work.

So when you cheat at school, it means instead of

writing the answers down because you have memorized them, you

maybe put them on a little piece of paper, or

you write them on your hand or arm, or you

try to look at someone else's paper.

So when you cheat, it means you don't

do the work you're supposed to at school.

It can also mean if you're playing a game

with someone, instead of following the rules, you break

the rules when no one is looking.

So sometimes when you play cards with someone,

they might keep a card up their sleeve.

No, I don't think anyone actually does that.

But you can also cheat at games.

You can also cheat in a relationship, and I'll

talk about that a bit later as well.

But the general term to cheat refers to.

Let me see, I'm trying to think of the opposite.

It's the opposite of good, nice, kind behavior.

It's like behavior where you're trying to.

Yeah, you didn't do the work, but you're trying

to make it look like you did the work.

So one way that you can cheat, and by the

way, the reason I'm doing this lesson is I read

an article about someone cheating while running a marathon.

So when you run a race, if you

take a shortcut, that would be considered cheating.

So a shortcut would mean if you have to run to the

end of the street and then turn around and come back.

You only run halfway, and then you turn around and come

back and you say that you ran the whole way.

The article I read about someone cheating in the

marathon, they actually ran part of the marathon, and

then they took a city bus for part of

the marathon and then got off.

By the way, a marathon is a 26 miles competitive run.

So obviously, if you take a bus during a

marathon, that would be cheating, but the more specific

term would be to take a shortcut to copy.

So when you cheat at school by looking at someone

else's paper or someone else's test, we call this copying.

Sometimes when you are writing a quiz, okay, not you.

Sometimes when some people are writing quizzes,

they don't know the answer, and so

they copy from the person beside them.

They look over their shoulder and they look at,

okay, what do they have for number one?

And then they write it down.

What do they have for number two?

And then they write it down.

So when you cheat at school, we

generally refer to it as copying.

We also call it cheating, of course.

So the official term in

an academic setting is plagiarism.

The verb is to plagiarize.

So when you copy another student's

work, we just call it copying.

But when you go on the Internet and you

take someone else's words and sentences and paragraphs and

you put them into a school assignment and say

you wrote those words even though you took them

from someone else, we call that plagiarism.

We say that you have plagiarized.

You have decided to take someone else's

writing and say that you wrote it.

Not a very good idea.

This is very serious.

In school, if you are caught plagiarizing,

it goes on your permanent record.

And I think in most schools, if you plagiarize

more than once, you might get kicked out.

In some schools, if you plagiarize

once, you could get kicked out.

So don't take other people's writing and

say that it is your own. Don't use the.

That's why I have the copy.

Paste sentence or images here.

Don't go and find something and copy and

paste it and say that you wrote it.

Not a good thing to falsify.

So I falsified this award.

I falsified this award last night.

I found a template for world's best teacher, and

I put my name on it with the date.

I put it really far in the future

because maybe I will win this award.

I don't think so.

But when you falsify something, we

are usually talking about documents.

Maybe someone claims they're a doctor,

but they falsified their diploma.

They just made it themselves.

Maybe you are applying for a

job and you falsify the documents.

So you create documents that are not true.

You say, oh, I won best teacher in Portugal in 2023.

Here's my award.

But it's simply something that you made.

You didn't actually get the award.

We would say that you have falsified that document.

So even the signature down here, I falsified that.

It's not my real signature.

So when you create a document yourself and

make it look like a real official document,

we would use the verb falsify.

And then in court, I hope this

isn't someone from an actual news article.

But in court, if you say you saw something

that didn't actually happen, we call that false testimony.

If I see an accident and my friend drives into

someone else's car, and then I go to court and

say, no, the other person drove into my friend, it's

the other person's fault, that would be false testimony.

This is also a bad thing to do.

You can go to jail, I think, if you lie in court.

But we would call that false testimony.

When you go to court and you lie about

what you saw, it's better to go and tell

the truth if you are a witness to fudge.

So this is kind of a funny one.

Often when you play a sport where you write

down your own score, sometimes the people you're playing

with might fudge their score a little bit.

When you fudge your score, it means, like, if you're playing

golf and it took you five hits to get the ball

in, you hit the ball from the tee, and you hit

it three times on the fairway, and then you putted once

on the green, and it was five total shots.

And then you go and you write four on it.

We would say that you are fudging your golf score.

So you're cheating a little bit,

you're lying a little bit.

You see how cheating and lying are

kind of similar, but sometimes people will

fudge their golf score a little bit.

So depending on what your friends are like, you might want

to keep an eye on them when they write their score

down to make sure they're not fudging their score.

And by the way, I see someone say,

oh, Hafia says, I love to eat fudge.

Fudge is actually a food as well.

A very sweet, sweet, yummy food made

from, like, sugar and condensed milk.

Very yummy.

So this is a big one.

This is a little tricky to talk about because I like to

keep my lessons safe for work, safe to use in school.

But when you are in a romantic relationship,

you will have a physical relationship as well.

You will sleep together, and sometimes one of

the partners will sleep with someone else.

And we call that cheating.

The formal term is adultery.

Adultery is when, if you're married to someone and

one of the people in the marriage goes and

has sex, like sleeps with someone else.

We call that adultery, but the more

common word would be to say cheat.

He's cheating on his wife,

she's cheating on her husband.

It means they've gone outside of the relationship

and are getting physical intimacy from another person.

So the official term adultery, but the

more common way to describe this would

be that someone is cheating on someone.

So in this picture, he might think

his wife is asleep, and then it

looks like maybe he's texting another woman.

I don't know.

I don't know the details.

Anyways, adultery and cheating to cut corners.

So this happens in construction.

Sometimes this can happen on large projects.

In order to save money, people might not

use the right materials or the proper methods

when they're building something or doing something, and

we say that they are cutting corners.

They do this to save money.

There was recently a building close to me

where the company building it cut corners.

They kind of cheated a little

bit and lied a little bit.

And then the building started to fall over.

Yes, that even happens in Canada.

Buildings sometimes under construction

start to fall over.

So when you cut corners, you're cheating a little bit.

You're trying to make money by not using

the proper materials or maybe just not using

the right method for what you are doing.

Forgery.

So sometimes people will forge documents.

Now, I talked about falsifying documents.

Forging documents is similar, but usually you

forge things that are more important.

So I might falsify documents, but

I might forge a new passport.

I might find a really nice painting in the world

and use my elite painting skills to create a forgery.

I might forge it.

So it's basically more like lying in paper form.

If I got a US passport and tried to put

my picture into it, I would be forging documents.

And that is highly illegal as well.

Again, you can see how this lesson is a

little bit about lying and cheating and activity that

I think isn't helpful in the world to embezzle.

So when you embezzle, this is a

form of theft that happens at work.

So someone who embezzles steals money

from the place they work.

So they either submit false documents saying they did

work, that they didn't do, so the company pays

them for it, or they take money directly from

the cash register, or if they're in charge of

the accounting, if they're in charge of keeping track

of money spent and money earned, they might create

like a little system where they get some of

the money and it goes to their personal account.

So there are a number of ways to embezzle.

I don't know how to embezzle, buddy, but this would

be stealing money from your boss, from your work.

So you're kind of cheating them out of their money.

You're finding a way to take money that isn't yours.

And then I guess you just hope you don't

get caught with all of this cheating stuff, like

every version of cheating, you're just hoping you don't

get caught, I guess, to cheat the system.

So this is a phrase we use to talk about someone

who's found a way to cheat and not really get caught.

Okay, so a good example would be, in sports,

sometimes athletes find a way to cheat the system

so they know if they take performance enhancing drugs,

if they take steroids or other things, it will

make them a better athlete.

Well, won't make them a better person.

It will help them perform better in their

event or in the sport they play.

And then they might know there's testing, but

they might know how to cheat the system.

Maybe they know that if they stop taking the

steroids three months before the competition, then when they

have a drug test, it won't show up.

You can also use this to talk about money and taxes.

There's a system for collecting income tax, but maybe

you found a way to cheat the system.

You found a way to pay less tax because you

found a way to get around paying what you owe.

So to cheat the system means there's a system and you found

a way to not follow the rules and not get caught.

False advertising.

So this one happens a lot.

And I consider this more lying than cheating.

But false advertising is when you see something in a

magazine or newspaper or on TV or in the ad

before a YouTube video and it looks amazing.

And then when you buy it, it looks different.

So here's some false advertising.

You see the hamburger on the far side? Looks amazing.

Look at that.

What a beautifully made hamburger.

And then if you go buy it,

it might actually look like this one.

It's a little bit mushed and it

doesn't look as big or as perfect.

False advertising is actually

illegal in most countries.

You can't put a picture up of a hamburger with two

patties, and then if someone buys it, it only has one.

That would be very flagrant false advertising.

But I think in most of the world, you can't

promise one thing, and then when people pay you, you

give them something different that is considered false advertising.

I think some advertising, most

advertising is a little bit.

You don't always get exactly what you

want, do you, when you buy something?

Table talk.

You can cheat at games.

There's things like stacking the deck.

There's things like table talk.

We talked about this in my lesson

on games a few months ago.

If I'm playing a game and if I'm

playing it with a partner who's sitting across

from me, so we're on the same team.

And if we use certain sentences or words to

mean things, like if I say to Jen, while

we're playing cards, I don't feel so good.

It might mean, hey, I have really good cards in my hand,

or it might mean I don't have good cards in my hand.

So table talk is a form of cheating when

you're playing a game, specifically a board game.

So it's like you're talking in code

to the person you are playing with.

And then stacking the deck would

be specifically in a card game.

If there are four people playing and you are dealing

without anyone noticing, you put the cards in the order

you want so that you, or maybe if you have

a partner, get the best cards for that game.

Stacking the deck.

And we use this phrase in life as well.

Sometimes the deck can be stacked against you if you

apply for a job, and the other person applying is

like the nephew of the person who owns the business.

We would say the deck was stacked against you.

You're not going to get the job underhanded.

I could not find a good picture

for this, so I found this one.

Underhanded means to do something sneaky or dishonest

or devious, or crooked or deceitful or sly

or fraudulent or shifty or wily.

So when you are underhanded, you're not truthful. Okay.

It would be underhanded for me to say, if you buy

my used camera, you get three extra batteries with it, but

then two of the batteries aren't for that camera.

That would be underhanded.

So I'm making it look like you get three batteries, but

two of them won't actually work when you try them.

So when you're underhanded, I think

the best word would be dishonest.

And deceitful.

Those would be the two words

I would choose for underhanded bribery.

I thought this picture was funny because it's like

an envelope full of money, and it says Mr.

Governor on it.

So bribery takes place when you give someone money, so

they do something that they're not supposed to do.

So let's say you wanted to win a lot

of money by betting on a sports team.

You might then cheat the system a bit because you

bribe the coach to make sure they lose the game.

Okay, maybe there's a boxing match and, you know, one

of the fighters, and you want to bet a million

dollars on who will win the boxing match.

And then you pay the fighter, you know, $50,000.

You give them a $50,000 bribe to

basically pretend they get knocked out in

the third round or something like that.

So bribery is when you give money illegally,

so someone does something that benefits you.

Okay, students never do this, but in a school, if a

student said, I'll give you $20 if you give me a

perfect score on my quiz, that would be bribery.

I would lose my job if I accepted a bribe like that.

So bribery is when you give someone money, I

think usually someone in charge of something, right?

So that they do something for you

that benefits you to stretch the truth.

So, again, this is more on the line of

lying than cheating, but it can relate to cheating.

So maybe, like this shirt says,

it was this big, honest.

Often when people go fishing,

okay, let me rephrase that.

Sometimes when people go fishing, they catch fish that

are this big, and they put them back in

the lake, and when they get home, they say

they caught a fish that's this big. Okay?

So they're stretching the truth.

They did catch a fish.

They're just kind of lying a little

bit about the size of it.

The reason I put this up about fish, though,

is there was an example a few years ago

where there was a fishing competition, and it was

by weight, and the people were catching fish, and

then they were putting fishing weights in the fish.

So the fish weighed more to try and cheat.

So they wanted to win the fishing competition, and

they did it by not just stretching the truth,

like, they went a little further, they actually cheated.

So I guess when you fish, you have lead weights, right?

You have your fishing line and you have a

hook, and you might have weights on the line.

And so they were using those weights.

So when they caught a fish, they were

using those weights to make the fish heavier

to try and win the competition.

Not a good idea.

You shouldn't cheat in a competition,

eventually you're going to get caught.

Let's do one more to get.

Oh, there's that slide.

This is a good slide.

This is what happens when, if you cheat,

you don't want to get caught, right?

The whole idea of cheating is that

you're doing something to help yourself.

That's not good.

But if you do get caught, that's the phrase we use.

So the teacher here, it looks

like these two people are cheating.

They're passing information to each other, and the

teacher is like, hey, what are you doing?

And pointing at them.

So cheaters often get caught. Okay.

If you cheat at what you're doing, there's

always a chance that you might get caught.

And then after you get caught, you

will have to pay the consequences.

That's the phrase we would use, doping.

So this is a specific term for what athletes

do to try and increase their performance using drugs

or other methods in order to run faster or

lift heavier weights or perform better in their event.

So sometimes you'll see a news article

that says cyclists caught doping in the

last race or during the Olympics.

You might hear about an athlete is disqualified

because they did a drug test and found

out the athlete had been doping.

So when you take performance enhancing drugs,

and there's a variety of them, we

sometimes refer to that as doping. Hacking.

If you play any computer games, it's frustrating

when the person you are playing with is

better than most humans could be.

So I played a game called counterstrike when I

was younger, and sometimes you just knew someone you

were playing against was cheating because even when you

were hiding behind a wall where no one could

see you, they would somehow get you.

So hacking, this would be.

I think we would call these wall hacks.

There's also aimbot.

There's different types of hacks you can use when

playing a computer game that allow you to cheat.

It's very frustrating to play a game

when it's not a level playing field.

When you have a level playing field, it means

no one is cheating, and it's just your own

abilities that are helping you win or lose.

But when someone hacks, they take advantage

of everyone else with their cheating.

So there's a phrase in English, if

you cheat, you're only cheating yourself.

And I'll explain this a little bit.

Let's say you have an English test coming up and

you cheat on the English test, and then you get

a job based on the results of that test.

But they find out really quickly, you

can't actually speak English very well.

You've cheated yourself like you think you got

ahead, but eventually you just get fired.

Another example would be if you really want

to run the 100 meters, race really fast

and you use steroids or some other drugs

to cheat, you didn't really win, did you?

Like you won against people who weren't cheating.

So you're really just cheating yourself.

You're making yourself feel better,

but it's actually a lie.

You're not actually better than the other people.

So if you cheat, you're only cheating yourself.

A cheat sheet.

So this came up a bit earlier.

There are two kinds of cheat sheets in the world.

In some classes, the teacher will say, you're allowed

to bring a cheat sheet to the exam.

Crazy, isn't it?

This happens in some senior level

math classes at our school.

Even the teacher might say, you are allowed

to bring a cheat sheet with formulas.

Let's say it's a geometry test where

you need to know PI r squared.

In other formulas, the teacher might say, you can bring

a piece of paper to the exam and you may

write the formula for diameter area of a triangle.

You're allowed to have those general formulas

on your cheat sheet, but nothing else.

And then when you write the exam, you

have the formulas, but I mean, you still

have to know how to use them, right?

In french class for younger students, sometimes we say

you can bring a cheat sheet that shows you

how to put verbs into the passe compose, whether

it uses avoir or etra as its auxiliary verb.

So we don't say write all the answers on the piece

of paper, but we sometimes allow students to bring a little

bit of information in that can be helpful for them.

So we call that a cheat sheet.

When it's official, it's allowed.

So you're not actually cheating.

But some students will bring in a cheat sheet

when they're not allowed, and then they're actually cheating.

Cheat day.

If you watch what you eat, if you are

someone like me that thinks a lot about, okay,

what am I going to eat today?

I don't want to eat too much.

And then you do that Monday through Friday, you might

have a day on like Saturday might be a cheat

day where you allow yourself to eat whatever you want.

So we would use the word conscientious.

That means you think a lot about what

you eat throughout the week, but you might

have a day where you're allowed to cheat.

You're allowed to have donuts.

So for me, I'm not this strict about

it, but I do know people who, they

eat very healthy food most of the month.

But then two or three days out of the

month, they have a cheat day where they're allowed

to eat whatever they want, a big pizza.

Big pizza, a couple of donuts, et cetera, et cetera.

And we call that a cheat day.

A day where you are allowing yourself to cheat.

And then back to the original, when

you cheat, you have the title cheater.

So if someone cheats on something,

we say they are a cheater.

So he used steroids to win the 100 meters dash.

He's a cheater.

She copied the answers from her friend.

She is a cheater.

She cheated on the test.

She is a cheater.

So you don't want to get that label.

You don't want to be called a cheater.

It would not be a nice thing to do.

All my.