Homework

12 Março 2020, 12:00 • Cláudia Rute Canelas Pereira Duarte

My dear students

 

I’ve been trying to adapt our course to our new circumstances but it has taken me some time because it’s very different from our good old boring face to face classes and this is not easy. I ask you to bear with me and try to cooperate as we muddle through this chaos. I will do my best to make sure that you can meet all the goals for this semester and that your learning and evaluation are as regular as possible. However, I’m still feeling my way around all of this myself, so please forgive me for any last minute changes.

 

Firstly, this is the one class I have which I feel will be hit the most by the change in circumstances because speeches are hard enough to do in class, let alone online. I’m sure Martin Luther King’s dream would not have been as effective as an e-dream. But then again, maybe this is an opportunity for reflection on what words we use and what for, so we might have amazing speeches at the end of this, I remain forever optimistic. In any case, I would like to restart classes, online version, next week. I’m still learning how to use the software but my plan for now is to use Zoom, so I would ask you to open an account and explore it. I will send you an invitation through the email registered in Fenix and the class will take place at the sametime as our usual classes. I’m sure it’ll be an awkward experience for everyone at first, myself especially, but the upside is that Zoom only allows for 40m sessions, so it’ll be a short class. If I find another way, I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime I would ask you to keep working on deciding what to write about and reading your coursebook, especially the sections on Invention and Arrangement. I will also be sending you your mock grammar test so you have that to chew on for a few days. You can always ask questions during the online class or send me an email but please allow for some time for my reply because I’m sure I’ll be swamped in email even more than usual.

So now for practical issues.

The idea for now is to do all the planning and drafting of your speech and we’ll save delivery for later, when we’re all together again, hopefully in time to do everything we need to do. As I see it, the worst-case scenario, if we continue in isolation for a long time, is that evaluation will be done all in writing and no speaking, but I’m not planning for that yet, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

On Tuesday we’ll have our class at 12:00 and we’ll hopefully have our psychotherapy lesson and we can address all the issues we have. I can’t make any promises I won’t jump into a rant about how unfair this whole thing is on everyone involved but bear with me…. I will also prepare some extra work you can do and speeches you can watch by then.

I will do my best to keep my summaries updated and fully informative about what the situation is from one session to another, so please keep track of that too.

Finally, if you have any questions, suggestions or comments on any obvious thing I’m forgetting, please send me an email. I am sending this email with all your emails instead of through Fenix so we can keep track of everyone, I hope you don’t mind me sharing your address (well, if you do it’s too late now anyway, needs must when the virus drives and all that…).

 

Let’s try to make the best of a difficult situation, and let’s hope we’ll all walk away with an interesting story to tell our grandchildren.

 

Keep washing those hands and stay safe.