Requirements
1. Successful mastery of the material assigned on this syllabus and its accompanying study guides. Students are reminded that mid-term and final examinations will cover all material assigned for the course regardless of whether it was used or discussed in tutorials.
2. Seven to ten hours per week of independent study (at least one hour per day). The program provides weekly study guides. The guides list the material to be prepared and to be handed in at the tutorial session.
3. Weekly 60-minute individual tutorials with the mentor assigned to the course. Mentors will collect and go over written homework assignments, answer questions brought by students, work on individual issues with pronunciation and grammar, and provide practice drills in preparation for written examinations.
4. Weekly homework assignments handed in at the tutorial meeting. Homework will be collected by the mentors, photocopied and placed in a portfolio for each student. Homework must be handed in on time at the tutorial to receive credit. There is a rolling one-week grace period for late assignments; homework is considered on time if it is submitted within one week of the original due date. This policy applies to all assignments, including late assignments, assignments submitted after an absence, and assignments rewritten to earn a higher grade. If an assignment is submitted more than one week after the original deadline, mentors can provide feedback and comments, but the student will not receive credit. Any exceptions due to illness or other emergencies must be cleared by the program director.
5. Weekly self-assessment reports submitted on time. Self-assessments are due at the end of each week and are recorded as “on time” as long as they are received by 9:00 am the following Monday morning. Late self-assessments will only receive partial credit. The self-assessments help students to evaluate their own progress in learning the language, their overall development of language learning strategies, and also alert the program staff to any problems with preparation or logistical details of the course.
6. Final writing skills assessment. The final writing skills assessment must be passed in order to pass the course.
Grading
10% attendance, preparation, and participation in all tutorials, plus on-time submission of homework and self-assessment reports
50% overall quality of the homework portfolio
40% final writing skills assessment
Grading scale: A (94-100); A- (90-93); B+ (87-89); B (84-86); B- (80-83); C+ (77-79); C (74-76); C- (70-73); D+ (67-69); D (64-66); D- (60-63); F (59 or lower). Final oral evaluation must be completed in order to pass the course.
The final writing skills assessments must be passed in order to receive credit for the course. Regular attendance is also a requirement for passing the course.
Final grades are submitted by the program director based on assessment grades and the student’s overall course participation record and homework portfolio.
Study Guides, Homework Assignments and Self-Evaluation
Weekly study guides serve as the student’s primary guide to the course and are essential to a student’s independent learning. The study guides are accessed through the course website and contain live links to any online materials students need to access. Students are responsible for accessing the online study guides and downloading printed copies for themselves as necessary.
Most of the study exercises included on the guides are activities a student does on his/her own. Some of the texts and online exercises include answer keys. Students are expected to use these keys to evaluate their own work. Exercises that do not include or lend themselves to simple answer keys cover material that will be “checked” through the process of using the material in tutorial interactions and conversation sessions.
Each study guide also includes work that should be handed in for feedback from the course mentor and to become a part of the student’s homework portfolio. If students have access to an answer key for any homework to be handed in, they are expected to use the answer key ahead of time to correct their own work. They should bring the page with noted corrections to the tutorial and have the mentor clarify any remaining confusions.
Homework handed in for the portfolio needs to be clearly labeled at the top of each page in English with the students name, the date, and the Study Guide number.
