Homework

12 Março 2020, 14:00 • 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, 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 same time 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. For the rest of the you should work on your writing assignment. 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.

 

The idea for now is to do all the writing part of the course and we’ll keep the oral 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.

 

So now for practical issues.

Regarding our programme, debating is suspended and we’re going to go into writing the next assignment. You also have plenty of exercises and reading to do from your coursebook so I’d ask you to work on that until Tuesday next week when we’ll do a progress report. I’ve been very slow answering your emails recently, and I apologise, but please keep working on exercises and your reading and watching and I’ll get to it as soon as I can; you are now the number one priority on my list but I’ve been dealing with a lot since Monday night. On Tuesday we’ll have our class at 2pm and you can ask all the questions you have.

I will do my best to keep my summaries updated and fully informative about what the tasks are 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.