Can you find the source that they're using or are they getting it from other students? If you can find the source, just ask why they didn't give attribution, th

Can you find the source that they're using or are they getting it from other students? If you can find the source, just ask why they didn't give attribution, then how he's going to approach understanding the code that they copy in the future. This has been my approach for students (college professor). The alternative is much harder. I've been mentoring a nephew who blames his teacher for how little he understands, but sends me code very clearly copied off of another student. My general approach has been to explicitly not help him with any actual source, and instead work on pseudocode. He might spend 8 hours trying to figure out how to compile the broken C++ that he's working with, but he can't honestly claim that I wasn't being helpful. As suggested by flukus, asking for code explanations isn't a bad way to go. Such explanations always find themselves companion to homework assignments that I craft, and it's what I've been trying to do in the pseudocode conversations with my nephew. However, another great way to go is to just find examples of any given problem (and attribute them!!) in another language entirely. Then the student has the opportunity to become a polyglot in a very natural way. Ultimately, I refuse to speak in the target language because I'm very aware that he wants me to hand him the answer.