U4 9-17

When I begin to read paragraph nine to paragraph seventeen, I find there are many difficult points.
In the ninth paragraph, the sentence “Yet despite the precautions, students still offer papers written by term-paper companies—or by other students—as their own” attracts my attention first. In this sentence, the word “precaution” means an action, which is done to prevent something unpleasant or dangerous happening. I do not know the specific meaning of this sentence. It seems that schools have done a series of measures to stop cheating, but students still offer papers not written by themselves. To [On]the contrary, they see [regard]peeking at others as an irresistible behavior. Therefore, the author raises questions that “is cheating human nature, or do parents and teachers encourage it by their own attitude?” It is worth thinking the word “encourage”. And what are the attitude of parents and teachers? The author gives us the answers as following. In the eleventh paragraph, the author quotes the words by a mother whose child is not old enough. In the conversation, it must be noted the phrase“bother about”[the phrase “bother about”must be noted ], it means no one care about cheating in younger. It is also implicate [implicated]the attitudes of parents. Then, the sentence “but I can not lay a guilt trip on a child for cheating—it is too tempting, too common and too much a part of human nature” interests me. In this sentence, the phrase “lay a guilt trip on” refers to make someone fell [feel]guilty; and “—” here plays the role of explanation. Maybe, in the mother’s view, she sees cheating as a significant part of human. Turning to “the most outspoken opponents of cheating”, here, we mean the person who frankly to [delete]oppose the behavior of cheating. They are also less critical of youngsters who cheat. It is worth me thinking why. Maybe it is a human nature. Mr. James R. Socas says: “You are on the threshold of being an adult, of taking responsibility for your action”. I guess this sentence implicates that youngsters are at the beginning of being adult, and they are being to take responsibility for their action. Everyone makes mistakes when they are young. Maybe this is the reason why adults less critical of youngsters when it comes to cheating [cheat]in them. What is more, I think these two paragraphs can answer the questions, which the author asks before.
In the next paragraph, the author mentions that more and more professors are turning to open-book exams instead of traditional exam, which not only fosters students’ conceptual thinking, but also makes crib sheets and peeking useless. To open-book exam, there is not the only [one]answer to answer the question. Therefore, to some degree, it can avoid of [delete]two-person get [getting]the same solutions[solution]. It may solve the cheating problem. In paragraph 15, the author mentions “create a campus-wide dialogue on the ‘pedagogical’ goals of exams”. Here, ‘pedagogical’ means something relating to teaching methods or the practice of teaching. And the ‘dialogue’ refers to the conversation between teachers and students to “discuss the ways that exams can be used as a learning device, not an evaluation tool”. From this sentence, we get that as soon as the exam motivates students to study, we can cut down on academic dishonesty.
In the last two paragraphs, teachers and the psychologists hold the opinion that only the way to stop students from cheating is keeping them from [delete]developing the habits in high school, or even in elementary school. At the mean [same]time, parents should take responsibility.
This is my understanding from paragraph nine to paragraph seventeen.