A204 Moench Hall
+1 812 877 8524
john.m.gardner@rose-hulman.edu
www.paisleycaterpillar.com
wordpress.rose-hulman.edu/gardner
• Puntos de partida (10th edition).
• Workbook / Laboratory Manual to accompany Puntos de partida — volume 2 (10th edition).
• You will need an internet connection.
• I highly recommend the following on-line English-Spanish dictionary www.wordreference.com.
• Although it is too difficult for this class, when you are ready for a good Spanish to Spanish dictionary the Real Academia Española is a definitive source: www.rae.es.
• You will be given access to the PC-version of the Plotagon animated cartoon software, along with a range of Spanish language voices to incorporate into your cartoons. (If you add the class after 20 March I may experience issues in getting you added to our group license, but we will find a way to get you access to the software.)
• You will need access to Microsoft Teams. This is part of the standard Institute laptop loadset. This will be the primary means of synchronous one-on-one contact with me. If you do not have Microsoft Teams, or are in a location or situation where it will not work well, please contact me. Skype for Business may be used as an alternative to Teams.
• You will need to access the Rose-Hulman Moodle site over the internet. This will be your primary means of submitting written assignments and for me to return corrected written assignments.
• You will need access to the film Nostalgia for the Light / Nostalgia de la luz (Patricio Guzmán, 2010). I believe it is available on both Netflix and Amazon. If access is a problem, please conact me with sufficient lead time.
I have made numerous changes in order to try to provide the best language learning experience under the circumstances, and will probably need to make more as the course progresses. In particular, there is now a greater emphasis on written work. Tests will be conducted in one-on-one video sessions and, while oral in nature, the emphasis will be on accuracy of use of vocabulary and targeted grammatical structures rather than on oral communication skills per se.
Any one-on-one sessions, sign-up lists or other events that take place at a scheduled time will show times in Eastern Daylight Time, which is the current time in Terre Haute. If you are in a location that is a great many time zones away, and therefore none of scheduled or available times will work well for you, please contact me.
If you are in a location or situation where you do not have sufficiently strong internet connectivity, or where needed software or websites are filtered or blocked, please contact me.
Please observe the following naming conventions in all computer files you submit. This is important to help me keep track of everyone's homework assignments. All file names should start with your last name (fortunately I do not have any students with the same last name.) Then, followed by a dash, you need to put the date the assignment was due (not the date you created the file, nor submitted it, but the date it was due) expressed as a number and then the name of the month. Finally if there is more than one assignment due on the same date, some indication of the assignment should follow, after a dash. For example: Gardner-18marzo.doc, or Gardner-18marzo-391ABC.doc. It is OK to submit all of one day's homework from the textbook as the same file, but if there are additional assignments due the same day, such as assignments related to the cartoon, please make them separate files. Within the document you submit, make sure you put at the top your name, the date the assigment is due, and some indication of what the assignment is.
It may happen that you become ill and cannot complete assignments as foreseen. Also, extenuating circumstances may affect your ability to complete assignments. Please contact me and we will make appropriate arrangements. It may happen that I become ill and cannot correct work, hold virtual one-on-one meetings with you, or post upcoming assignments as I need and want to. In that case I will be in touch with you.
The best way to contact me is via e-mail at gardner@rose-hulman.edu. If you are unable to do that, please call my office phone at +1 812 877 8524 and leave a brief message, including a number I can call you back at, if appropriate. If none of those things work, then you may need to get creative, and contact someone to contact me on your behalf.
In this special distance-learning version of SPAN-L113, my primary objective is to make sure you are able to learn the material covered and be well prepared for a seamless and strong transition to SPAN-L211, or, if you will not be continuing with Spanish, to round out your basic understanding of the language and its structures. More specifically, we will work to develope speaking, listening, reading and writing skills in Spanish, to acquire vocabulary and grammatical structures for effective and accurate communication, and to develop an awareness of Spanish-speaking peoples and their cultures.
Making mistakes is a natural and important part of the language learning process. It is OK to make mistakes; everyone in the class will do so. So do your daily homework and workbook assignments in a conscientious and sincere fashion and look at the corrections and comments I make on your daily assignments so that you make mistakes and learn from them before the quizzes. Use the quizzes to further assess your state of proficiency before the tests. Don't wait for the test to make your mistakes… make them on your homework and quizzes and in your workbook so that you can learn from them before the tests.
Daily homework is listed on the weekly pages you can access from the menu on this website. Those pages explain how to understand what the assignment is. Changes to the homework may be announced by e-mail. All homework is to be submitted via the appropriate drop boxes in Moodle unless otherwise specified.
On some homework assignments, you may be asked to express personal information, such as what your address is, what your parents are like, what time you get up every day, etc. The point of these exercises is to practice the linguistic skills required to express such information; it’s really none of my business where you live or what time you wake up. If you feel uncomfortable giving this information, you should feel free to substitute any plausible answer. But remember that your answer, if not truthful, still needs to be plausible and consistent. For example, if I ask you to say your phone number in Spanish, and you give a number of only three digits, your answer will be regarded as incorrect. If one day you tell me your mother is a lawyer and the next day you say she is a doctor, I may think that you don't understand the question.
You should work on the workbook at your own pace while we’re studying each chapter and check your answers in the back of the workbook. In general, all the exercises from each workbook chapter are assigned and should be completed. If any are to be omitted I will indicate that on the homework page. The only workbook exercises I will collect and grade are those for which no answers are given in the back of the workbook. In general these exercises are at the end of each workbook chapter, in the section called puntos personales.
If you need additional time to complete the workbook assignment, ask for an extension at least a day in advance. If the workbook assignment you turn in is incomplete and therefore receives a low grade you may not do the missing sections and turn them in later for credit. If you do not follow the directions for doing the workbook I may either give you a low grade, or ask you to re-do the workbook or parts of it, as I see fit.
With the exception of workbook chapter 13 (which you may have already started prior to the cancellation of classes for the spring term) you should prepare all the Puntos Personales exercises as a word document and submit it digitally. You do not need to write out the questions, but only the answers you would otherwise have written by hand. Please put on all needed accents and other diacritical marks. (If you are using Macintosh, that's easy to do; if using PC, there are many different approaches, and I'm going to ask you to research and implement the one that works best for you. If you are unable to figure out how to do it, please ask me.) You need to be sure to include the chapter number (for example, Chapter 13), the letter designation of the Puntos Personales exercise you are doing (for example, A) and the question number (1, 2, 3, etc.)
Collected workbook assignments will be graded simply as “acceptable / not acceptable.” Only assignments which are complete and show evidence of effort will receive full credit of 10 points. Unacceptable work will receive between between 0 and 9 points. If you have any questions or doubts about exercises that are not collected, please ask.
Audio files needed for doing some of the workbook exercises are available as streaming on-line media from http://highered.mheducation.com/sites/0073534498/student_view0/index.html.
Quizzes will be give at scheduled times over topics announced in advance. The purpose of these quizzes is to help you discover what skills and content you have good control over and what skills and content require additional work. Generally, I give immediate feedback on the quizzes, going over the right answers at the conclusion of the quiz.
Quizzes will be administered on a one-on-one basis via the call function within Microsoft Teams. If that proves unworkable, then Skype for Business will be used. If that also proves unworkable solutions will be reached on an individual basis. A sign-up page for quizes and other work done one-on-one will be made available.
Exams are given on the dates announced online. They will focus on skills and content learned since the last test, but will assume that you have good control of skills and content learned previously, and may have a review section about those skills and content. My current plan is to give the exams in the same format as the quizzes, which is via Microsoft Teams or Skype. There may be a take-home written portion of the exam as well.
Even though we are apart, everyone still gets to do a show and tell, which will be graded pass / fail. There will be several assignments leading up to the show and tell presentation to enable it to go more smoothly, and more information will be given as we approach those dates. I have not yet decided if Show and Tell will be one-on-one with me, like the quizzes, or in a virtual group presentation setting.
In preparing your Show and Tell, remember that in general your audience is the rest of the class. You need to make the presentation understandable to them. If you don’t know a word, they probably don’t know it either. So try to use words that we already know, that are cognates, or that we can figure out based on context. Gestures can also be an important part of communication. You should strive to use an oral style of discourse in speaking to the class, even if you elect to read what it is you’re saying from notes.
Everyone gets to do an original, short, animated cartoon, using the software available from Plotagon.com (Do not purchase anything from this website, you will be given an access code a week or so into the term.) Note that this software is continually being updated with new features, however, older versions are nearly always still viable and accordingly you can use any version of the software you wish, on any platform for which it is available.
¿Cómo va a ser el festival de dibujos animados? ¡Va a ser muy divertido! :) Your cartoon should be about three to five minutes long (it may also be a series of shorter cartoons that add up to at least three minutes, if that fits your concept and subject matter.) It should not be shorter than three minutes nor longer than ten unless you get permission from me to do so. At some point, your cartoon must contain one or several text plates stating the title of the cartoon and your name. These text plates are like the title cards of a silent film and area easily generated with the cartoon software.
After all the cartoons have been made available for the class, class members will vote, via secret ballot (i.e. homework) on who should receive the awards in the following categories: mejor comedia; mejor drama; mejor animación. You are not allowed to vote for your own cartoon.
Your cartoon will be archived and potentially be shown to others in the future. If you do not wish for your cartoon to ever be seen outside of class you must notify me.
Cartoons are graded in the following areas: Script and concept; Grammar and vocabulary; Quality of animation; Overall effect. There will be several homework assignments leading up to and supporting the creation of your final cartoon. Since these aspects are all weighted equally, high production values alone will never merit a top grade if the communicative aspects are lacking. In fact, sometimes the simpler, the better. Do not fight against the limitations of the software (characters cannot pick up objects with their hands, for example.) Instead, work within the characteristics of the software. Strive for communication and fun, and a good story, well-told.
At various points in the term I will give useful pointers about how to create a good story and how achieve quality animation with the Plotagon software, but ultimately it is your responsibility to create a story and to learn to use the software. It is not hard to figure out.
The cartoon may be on any topic you wish. It can be a documentary. It can teach us something. It can be fiction. In short, it can be anything you want it to be! If stumped for ideas, consider the following suggestions: paraphrase a well-known play or historical anecdote; retell a fairy tale; change a fairy tale; take a character and put them in an awkward situation and then let the audience see how they get out of it. The best stories often have conflicts or difficulties which one or several characters must deal with in some fashion. Such stories often follow an overall structure of exposition (where we see what the characters are like), conflict (where it becomes clear that the character(s) are in a tough situation), rising action (where things get even more complicated), climax (where everything comes to a head and the characters must confront things and succeed or fail) and denouement (where loose ends are tied up.) Consider the story of the Three Little Pigs, or of Icarus and Daedalus, which both follow this general structure.
Other ideas include:
In writing your cartoon, remember that your audience is the rest of the class; if you have to look a word up in the dictionary, the rest of the class probably does not know it either. You must make your message understandable to the audience. Use words the class knows. A few new words can be effectively used if they are clearly tied to some idea or action during the cartoon (and thus defined.)
All grades are posted in the Moodle gradebook. Please check your detailed grade in Moodle periodically, and especially before midterm and the end of the term, and let me know of any discrepancies. You should retain all graded work until your final grade has been turned in so that we can easily resolve any discrepancy.
Do not cheat. If you are not allowed to use notes or other aids during a quiz or test, do not do so. Cheating can consist of copying from another student, turning in someone else’s work as your own, changing answers after work has been returned and then claiming they were incorrectly marked as wrong, using a book, cheatsheet or internet device to access information during a quiz or test, and many other things. I prefer to make cheating hard in order to deter cheaters, but some people find a way to cheat anyway. If I catch you cheating your penalty will depend on the circumstances, but it will be much more than simply an F on the assignment you cheated on; the amount your grade is lowered will probably make you want to drop the course. Some of the things I do to deter cheating will be obvious; others may not be apparent to you. I don't discuss all the measures I take to make cheating hard, because if I did it would make no difference to the honest students, and would only help the cheaters find a better way to cheat. So, to put it simply: don’t cheat.
| Grade category weighting | |
|---|---|
| Examen 1 | 15% |
| Examen 2 | 15% |
| Examen 3 | 15% |
| Pruebas | 10% |
| Tarea (homework) | 15% |
| Manual (workbook) | 15% |
| Show and Tell | 5% |
| ¡Gran Festival de Dibujos Animados! | 10% |
| Grading scale | |
|---|---|
| A | 90 - 100% |
| B+ | 87 - 89.99% |
| B | 80 - 86.99% |
| C+ | 77 - 79.99% |
| C | 70 - 76.99% |
| D+ | 67 - 69.99% |
| D | 60 - 66.99% |
| F | 0 - 59.99% |