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Conversation and Composition I: Rückblick Looking Back at German Culture, 1952-2002  Fall 2002 Internet Activities, Writing Assignments, Class Portfolio, Oral Presentation, Course Goals, Grading _______________________________ Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. Die Physiker. New York: Oxford UP, 1965. Class Handouts. You are also expected to own (this is most ideal or to have ready access to a good (at least 300,000 entries) German-English, English-German dictionary such as: The Harper Collins German College Dictionary. 3rd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1998. (available in bookstore and on reserve in the Purdy-Kresge Library) top German 3100 is designed to refine and expand your German communication skills (speaking, writing, listening, reading, cultural knowledge) with a special emphasis on the productive skills of speaking and writing. The course will be conducted entirely in German and is intended to introduce you to a more sophisticated use of vocabulary and to help you work through problems of stylistic expression in speaking and writing. At the same time, the course will introduce you to cultural and political events of the last fifty years in Germany and other German-speaking countires. The readings from the textbook Rückblick, Friedrich Dürrenmatt's play Die Physiker, and the other texts and films will provide the source material for both class discussions and your essays and exams. The Handbuch zur deutschen Grammatik will help you to review select points of German grammar. _______________________________ Participation and attendance are required for all class sessions and are essential for your success in this class. You are expected to come to class prepared, to be actively involved in classroom discussions and activities, and to speak German at all times. This is important both because active participation will help you to succeed in the course and because this course requires group effort. The better prepared each of you is individually, the more quickly and thoroughly we will cover the material and the more time we will have for creative review. Please make sure to bring your texts with you to all classes and be ready to begin class on time. You will receive a daily participation grade based on a scale of 5 (= prepared and on time) to 0 (=absent). If you must miss a session, I expect you to inform me of this before class on that day. Absences are excused when due to illness, personal or family emergency, or activities or religious holidays recognized by Wayne State University. Excessive tardiness and unexcused absences will affect your grade significantly: The first four unexcused absences will result in your final grade being lowered by one-third point (e.g., A- --> B+); each additional unexcused absence will cause the final grade to be lowered by the same amount. Departmental policy requires that all cell phones and pagers to be turned off for the duration of the class period. _______________________________ To guarantee maximum use of our class periods, reading and writing assignments must be prepared and completed on time, as assigned on the syllabus. Our main purpose in class is to use German communicatively and creatively, and the homework is an essential means to this end. The homework related to the readings and films of the course will help you to develop your reading and writing skills. The grammar homework will help you to improve the accuracy of your written and spoken expression. We will not always go over homework in class, but I will always give you an opportunity to ask questions about the homework. All written homework assignments are due and will be collected on the date indicated on the syllabus. Assignments will be assigned a grade on a scale of 10-0. If you must miss a class, you may submit your homework assignments electronically. I will not accept but not assign a grade to late assignments, including assignments that you are working on after class has begun. Please keep in mind that homework includes reviewing information, vocabulary, and grammar points from previous lessons, and that the most successful language learners spend at least two hours on homework and review outside of class for every hour they spend in class. "Übung macht den Meister (bzw. die Meisterin)," as the Germans say. top As part of your homework assignments you will be expected to write (in German) to the class listserve at various times throughout the semester. This activity serves two purposes. As a pre-communicational task it will allow you as a group to brainstorm about various topics and ideas. As a pre-writing activity it will give you the opportunity to write freely, to focus more on content than form (the latter will be important when you write your formal essays and exams!), and to begin to develop vocabulary fields for discussing specific topics. To receive credit, you must submit your contribution to the list before 9am on the day the assignment is due so that all of us have an opportunity to review what you have written before our class begins. The quizzes in this class are intended to reinforce the idea that learning a language is a cumulative process that requires continuous review. They will help you to see which skills you have mastered and which skills require additional practice. The best way to prepare for them is to do your homework and review previous material every day. Beginning in Week 2, there will be short (5-10 minute) quizzes on most Tuesdays, as indicated on the syllabus, to test the material from the preceeding weeks. Vocabulary quizzes will cover material from the vocabulary lists that we generate in class. Keep in mind that the best way to practice vocabulary so that it really sticks is to practice it in context. To practice a noun, for example, you might want to try making sentences that use the noun as many cases as possible (Der Tourist ist abenteuerlustig. Ich sehe den Touristen. Wir gehen mit dem Touristen an den Strand. Wo sind die Koffer des Touristen?) To practice a verb, you should make sentences that go through all of the conjugations and tenses. To practice an adjective, you could practice either using the comparative and superlative forms or making sentences using the adjective attributively (i.e., with adjective endings in different cases). Grammar and course content quizzes will cover material from the readings and from the grammar exercises. To prepare for these, you should go over your homework assignments as well as any other activities done in class, spending extra time on any exercises with which you had difficulty. An unexcused absence from a quiz will result in a grade of zero on that quiz. _______________________________ Writing assignments and oral presentations are due on the day indicated on the syllabus and will be graded as a separate category from the rest of your homework. This is done both to acknowledge the particular effort that these assignments require and to emphasize the importance of developing writing and speaking skills. Written assignemnts will be graded based on both content and form (grammar and structure of paper). Oral assignments will be graded on content and comphrehensibility. All writing assignments must be typed and double-spaced, using 1" margins and 12-point Times or Times New Roman Font. If you are not satisfied with the grade you receive for a writing assignment, you may revise it and the two grades will be averaged together. Revisions are due one week after the original assignment is returned to you. If for any reason other than an excused absence you turn in a paper late, I will take off 1/3 letter grade (3.3 points) for every day that it is late. I will not accept writing assignments later than two weeks after the deadline. You may not rewrite papers that are late. Due Dates for Essays: Sept. 19, Oct.
31, Dec. 11 To help you review material and see the progress you make over the course of the semester, you should keep all work for this course in a 3-ring notebook that is divided into 5 sections:
Please bring your portfolios with you to class. I will check them periodically and I will collect and grade them at the end of the semester. top The final exam will consist of an oral presentation. During the final exam period assigned to this class (Tuesday, December 17 from 10:40-1:10), each of you will present an oral report on a topic of your choosing related to the past fifty years of German cultural history. The report should be 10-15 minutes (no shorter and no longer) and you should prepare ahead of time a vocabulary list and five questions that class members should be able to answer after hearing your report. Following each formal presentation, there will be time for questions and discussion. Date: top By the end of this course you will have: _______________________________
_______________________________ Please inform me as soon as possible of any special learning requirements you have. And please make it a point to see me if you are having difficulties. The German and Slavic Department also has an open-door policy: Students are encouraged to seek out any other instructor in the department for course-related help or advice should their instructor not be available. Office hours of all instructors are posted near the main office (443 Manoogian). In giving you this syllabus, I agree to fulfill my faculty obligations to you as students. In taking this course and thereby accepting this syllabus, you are also agreeing 1) to fulfill your student obligations to the instructional process, and 2) to adhere to the highest standards of academic honesty and integrity. These obligations are outlined in the University Bulletin. Please make sure to familiarize yourself with the dates, including drop/add information, on the WSU Registration Calendar, |