The students finished preparing for the Persuasive Writing presentations of Barack Obama's 2012 NDC Acceptance speech.  We saw the first two groups and the next two groups will present next class.

Attention: as the teacher was sick for a week, there will be two extra lessons to compensate for the two lessons tha she missed.  These two extra lessons will be on Thursday, April 9th and Tuesday, April 14th at the usual lesson times.

Easter HOMEWORK: Questions on page 83, Comprehension & Literary analysis about the short story “Good advice is rarer than rubies” by Salman Rushdie (pp. 77-82) that you should read at home over the Easter holidays.  
  I – Assessment and grading system: new rules (April 2020)

Given the special circumstances we are currently facing, the assessment and grading system had to be changed. Weighting is now as follows:

 ·      first writing test 15%

·      second writing test 35%

·      individual oral presentation 20%

·      written assignments 25%

o   question about “Tony’s story” by Leslie Marmon Silko (already done)

o   letter to the Editor (already done)

o   questions about “The guilt” by Rayda Jacobs (already done)

o   essay answer about the article “South Africa unease plays out on campus” and the TEDx Talk  “Mad at Mandela” by Sisonke Msimang (already done)

There will be no more written assignments.

·      attendance 5% (exclusively for in-class lessons from 27^th January to 9^th March)

 TESTS

First test: 23 March 2020 (already done)

Second test: 22 April 2020 (to be done during class hours)

 The oral presentation is an individual assignment that will consist in a 5-minute speech, spoken from notes, NOT read. Topic: presenting a linguistic, social or cultural aspect related to an English-speaking country. In principle, the oral presentations will be done during Zoom meetings. Each student will choose the date of the oral presentation from a set of proposed dates. I will share a file with you on Google Drive for you to choose a date for your oral presentation.

The Film Discussion Project is cancelled as this was supposed to be an oral group assignment.

 Since assessment is conducted on a regular basis, any task that is not submitted when due and/or any form of plagiarism will be given a zero. Any student who fails to do one of the above-mentioned tests/tasks will be given a zero.

 Worker students may, if they so wish, opt for continuous assessment (in which case they will have to comply with all the assessment criteria set for regular students) OR sit the Época de Avaliação Final Alternativa examination. The examination will focus on the contents of the syllabus adopted for the B2.1 level.

 As I’m sure you all know now, the Época de Avaliação Final Alternativa examination will also have to be done at home during class hours since FLUL will remain closed. The date has not been set yet but it will be in the week 1 to 5 June.

 Now that FLUL has decided on a course of action and set up the assessment rules for this semester, could working students please let me know whether they are opting for continuous assessment or whether they are just sitting the Época de Avaliação Final Alternativa examination?

 II - Activities for classes from 15 April-6 May

 (Easter holidays: 8-14 April)

 15 April: Discussion of the short story “Good advice is rarer than rubies” by Salman Rushdie (pp.77-83)

 20 April: Discussion of two newspaper articles “India’s caste system is alive and kicking – and maiming and killing” (pp.84-86) and  “Child marriage in India finally meets its match as young brides turn to courts” (87-88) and two TED talks (p. 89): “How to make peace? Get angry” (Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel laureate)  & “Fighting forced marriages and honour based abuse” (Jasvinder Sanghera)

 22 April: Second writing test

 27 April: Oral presentations start

 29 April: Oral presentations

 4 May: Oral presentations

6 May: Oral presentations (this will be our last class)

2. Journal entry #3 (due by Saturday).