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Lehrplan: (Handouts und andere Materialien finden angemeldete Student-Innen auf der Blackboard-Seite für Deutsch 4600.) |
Conversation and Composition I Looking Back at German Culture, 1945-Present  Fall 2004 WSU Blackboard, Writing Assignments and Oral Presentations, Class Portfolio, Oral Final, Course Goals, Grading _______________________________ Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. Die Physiker. New York: Oxford UP, 1965. Blickpunkte II (available on-line through the course page on Blackboard) Class Handouts (available on-line through the course page on Blackboard) 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 Marwil's and on reserve in the Adamany Undergraduate Library)
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. All students who have passed or placed out of German 2020 at Wayne State University may take this course. 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. As in the case of German 3200, the course will deal with cultural and political events of the last fifty years in Germany and other German-speaking countries 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 as Microsoft Word attachments through the Blackboard drop box. 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 The WSU Blackboard system will be used to organize the materials for this course. Your WSU Access-ID and password will give you access to the course page for Blackboard.
The quizzes in this class are intended to reinforce the idea that learning about a culture and learning a language are cumulative processes that require 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 4, there will be weekly quizzes, as indicated on the syllabus, to test the material from the preceding 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 quizzes will cover material from the grammar exercises. To prepare for these, you should go over your assignments from the Handbuch as well as any other related activities done in class, spending extra time on any exercises with which you had difficulty. Content quizzes will cover the readings, films and course handouts. To prepare for these, you should go over your assignments from Rückblick, other readings, the film worksheets and questions, and any material I give you in class. An unexcused absence from a quiz will result in a grade of zero on that quiz. _______________________________ Writing assignments and oral presentations (Referate) 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. You will write three essays this semester. Written assignments will be graded based on content and form (grammar and structure of paper). All writing assignments must be typed and double-spaced, using 1" margins and 12-point Times or Times New Roman Font, and checked with a spell-check program. 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 Writing Assignments: Oct. 1, Nov. 12, Dec. 20. You will also give one five-minute oral presentation (Referat) related to one of the topics we discuss in class. Topics and dates 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. Grades will be based on organization and clarity of presentation. top The final exam will consist of an oral presentation. During the final exam period assigned to this class, you will make an oral presentation on a topic from German cultural history between 1933-2002. Following each formal presentation, there will be time for questions and discussion. Date: Monday, December 20, 10:40-1:10 top By the end of this course you will have: _______________________________
Because this is a language class, and because participants are at different levels, I will use the following grading scales:
_______________________________ 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, | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||