SYLLABUS

Elementary French 1 (online) 21:420: 101: W5

Winter 2016 (12/23/15 – 01/15/16)
Dr. Nicky Agate

This syllabus contains all the information you need about the practical aspects
of the class. Please check it before emailing me.

EMAIL nicky.agate@rutgers.edu
I will respond to all emails within 24 hours Monday-Friday.

OFFICE HOURS (via our class Blackboard Collaborate room) Dec 23 at

12pm, and Jan 4, 6, 11, and 13, all at 8pm. Limited other times available by
appointment.
I’ll provide a brief overview of the week’s work and answer any general
questions. You should also meet with me (in the Blackboard Collaborate room)
at least twice over the course of the winter semester (in addition to the oral
exam). These meetings are your responsibility to set up and attend (they can be
within regular office hours).

COURSE DESCRIPTION This is an elementary French course designed for

absolute beginners (people who have never studied French before). It is not a
course for native or heritage speakers or students who have studied French for
more than a year in high school. Such students will not receive credit for the
course.

CALENDAR All assignment and exam dates are in this syllabus and on the
Blackboard calendar.

REQUIRED COURSE MATERIALS

• ePack: Motifs: An Introduction to French, 6th + iLrn™ Heinle Learning Center
Instant Access http://www.cengagebrain.com/shop/isbn/9781133545552
• Blackboard access: http://blackboard.rutgers.edu

Technology: As this is an online-only course, you will need a computer with

Internet access, speakers, and a microphone. You will not be able to complete
this course on a mobile device.

  1
COURSE OBJECTIVES This course leads to elementary proficiency in written
and oral expression and written and listening comprehension in French. Over
the course of the semester, you will learn to talk and write about yourself, your
family, your likes and dislikes, your studies, and your future plans in French. You
will be able to tell the time & talk about the weather. You will understand some
cultural differences between France and the USA. Hopefully, you’ll have fun.

LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of the semester, you should be able to:
● Produce basic sentences using the present and near future tenses, and
compose short essays.
● Ask and answer in French; communicate orally with your peers and your
professor. Understand and begin to produce the rhythmic patterns of the
spoken language. Begin to produce correctly pronounced French vowel sounds.
● Comprehend simple French texts and articles, even if you don’t understand
every word. Written comprehension.
● Comprehend simple dialogs and passages spoken in contemporary French.
Use context clues when meaning is unclear.

TIME COMMITMENT Learning a foreign language takes a lot of work: you’re

learning to do something, not learning something. Think of it like learning to
play a sport or a musical instrument; it takes practice — and a lot of it.
If this were an on-campus class, we’d be meeting somewhere between two and
four times a week. In order to ensure you grasp each concept as it comes up,
you need to allow yourself enough time to take it in and practice it before
moving on to something new. That’s why it’s important to do the exercises as
you come across them on the PowerPoint, rather than all together in a clump.
In the winter semester, you should anticipate spending 3 hours a day on
French.

Rutgers Policy on Academic Integrity

GRADE BREAKDOWN
● coursework 45%
• iLrn exercises 40%
• blog posts and responses on Blackboard 5%
● projects 10% (2 written essays)
● exams 35% (midterm 15%; final 20%)
● oral exam 10%

  2
COURSEWORK (45%)
Each Tuesday morning, a new PowerPoint presentation will be made available
on Blackboard. Follow it slide by slide, reading along in your book and doing
the iLrn exercises as you do so. Watch the videos, listen to the audio, practice
the pronunciation, do the exercises.

NOTE: Your homework grade is not based on how well you perform, but on
how much effort you put in: doing all the work means getting all the points!

Feedback Some coursework is computer-graded; I will grade the rest. To see

my feedback, in iLrn:
1. Log in to iLrn at http://hlc.quia.com/
2. Click on “My Results.”
3. Select the appropriate Module.
4. There will be a notebook icon next to any exercise with feedback.
5. Click to open the exercise then scroll through for comments.

iLrn exercises (40%) The iLrn exercises represent most of your

homework. Some are indicated as you progress through the PowerPoint
(these help you see if you understand what you were just reading); others
are displayed on the last slide of the PowerPoint. Also on the last slide are
the iLrn oral exercises you must complete with a partner (via the iLrn
voiceboard). You will be matched to a partner on the first day of class
(Dec 24); it is then your responsibility to find a time that suits both of you,
to log into iLrn at that time, and to record these exercises.

NOTE: Make sure you look at both “textbook” & “workbook”

activities in iLrn (use the calendar view to see all assigned activities).

NOTE: If your partner is not responding, let me know as soon as

possible. This is your responsibility.

Blackboard discussion forum (5%)  

A (3-5 sentence) blog post and a substantive (1-2 sentence) comment on
a fellow classmate’s blog post per module. For topics, see the relevant
module’s PowerPoint.

  3
PROJECTS 10%
There are two projects for this course and each is worth 5% of your final grade.
You will submit these via Blackboard.
• Essay 1 (first draft due midnight on Jan 6). The topic is in iLrn, exercise
"2s". You have to interview your partner using the questions provided,
then write a portrait of him/her. 150 words.
• Essay 2 (first draft due midnight on Jan 14) iLrn, exercise 5s. 200 words.
In this class, we take a process approach to writing. When you turn in an essay, I
will read it and signal the errors. When you get your composition back, you read
my comments and rewrite the essay, correcting all errors and incorporating any
changes I suggest. The corrected version is due two days after I return it.

NOTE: Your final composition grade is an average of the grade for your first
draft and the grade for your rewrite. Not rewriting your essay will result in a
0 (zero) as the rewrite grade.

NOTE: All compositions should be double-spaced and include a word count.

Any sources you use must be cited, it must be entirely clear when you cite
your sources, and all French must be your own — if not, it’s plagiarism.

EXAMS (35%)
There are two exams in this course, a midterm and a final. The midterm, worth
15% of your final grade, will be given to you after you have completed Module
3. The midterm will be available for 48 hours from 11:59pm on Friday, Jan 8
and is due by 11:59pm on Sunday, Jan 10. You may start at anytime during
that 48-hour period, but once you download the exam from Blackboard, you
have just 90 minutes to complete it.

The final is cumulative, worth 20%, and will be given to you after you have
completed Module 5. The final will be available for 48 hours from 11:59pm on
Friday, Jan 15 and is due by 11:59pm on Sunday, Jan 17. You may start the
exam at anytime during that 48-hour period, but once you download it, you
have just 90 minutes to finish.
There is no proctor requirement for either exam, but I trust that you will be
honest. You may not use your notes, book, dictionary, or the Internet.

FINAL ORAL EXAM (10%)

The final oral exam will take place in our Blackboard Collaborate room on the
evenings of Thursday Jan 14 and Friday Jan 15.

  4
Grading scale
Numeric grades correspond to the following letter grades. A half of a
percentage point or more (no less) will be rounded up to the next full
percentage point:

A 90 – 100%
B+ 86 – 89%
B 80 – 85%
C+ 76 – 79%
C 68 – 75%
D 60 – 67%
F Less than 60%

Tutoring
Free peer tutoring is available at the Rutgers Learning Center, 140 Bradley Hall.
Make an appointment onsite or online: http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/rlc

Rutgers Policy on Academic Integrity

Translation programs & dictionaries

Paper, electronic, and online dictionaries are permitted, while all translation
programs are prohibited. Check with your instructor if you are in doubt. With a
dictionary, you look up one word or idiomatic phrase at a time.
The entry will tell you the grammatical function of the word, indicate its
pronunciation, and give a list of equivalents; you will still need to use your
knowledge of grammar and verb conjugation to create a sentence. Context
clues help you choose the correct word for your purposes. Online translation
programs give you an immediate translation of a chunk of text (more than one
word or idiomatic phrase). They provide you with the grammar and words, and
you do little more than cut and paste the text — regardless of context. The use
of such programs results in an automatic F for the essay. A second offense
will result in an F in the course.

  5