How Your Grade is Calculated
Your grade will be determined according to the following percentages:
Biography reports
-------------------------
15%
Midterm Exam
-------------------------
15%
Term Paper
-------------------------
20%
Final Exam
--------------------------
20%
What Gets Graded
Here is a
list of the various assignments that you will complete for this class.
-
Reading Journal:
You should take notes on your reading as you go along through the semester,
summarizing what you read and writing down your reactions. (not graded)
-
Response papers:
You will write several reactions to the readings. (letter grades)
-
Card reports:
You will complete two brief analyses of two works. (percentage grades)
-
Biography reports:
Each student will give a 5- to 10-minute lecture—a biographical sketch of
one of our authors. This
presentation must be accompanied by a written outline. (credit/no credit for
the presentation; letter grade for the written outline)
-
Exams: You
will take one midterm and one final exam.
These tests will involve a combination of short answer and essay
questions. (percentage grades)
-
Term paper:
You will write one 6- to 8-page formal essay.
This essay will include research and proper documentation of sources.
(letter grade)
Grading
Scale
The
papers and biography reports will be given a simple letter grade.
The letter grades are equivalent to the following per cent scores.
A 95
Excellent
B 85
Good
C 75
OK
D 65
Needs work
F 55
Back to the drawing board
Grades for all the other
assignments and your final average at the end of the course will be determined
according to the following scale.
A 90-100
B 80-89
C 70-79
D 60-69
F
59 or below
A
Note About Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the act of stealing someone else’s words or ideas,
whether intentionally or unintentionally. It
is a capital offense to copy portions of other texts or even to paraphrase
someone else’s ideas without giving credit to the original author, to mislead
your readers into thinking those words or ideas are your own.
It is therefore expected that you will give reference to the original
authors who may have inspired you and that you will document all your sources.
The penalty for plagiarism will be decapitation: those who do not use
their heads neither need nor deserve to keep them.
Seriously, plagiarism is grounds for failure.
At the discretion of the instructor, you may fail the assignment or you
may fail the course.
Examples
Intentional plagiarism exists when a student lists sources that he or she
has not used; when a student copies from a source but fails to cite it, thereby
misrepresenting the original source's ideas as his or her own; when a student
copies material from another student's work without giving that other student
credit; when a student buys or borrows a whole paper or portions of a paper from
another student or from the World Wide Web; when a student copies another
artist's music or work of art and tries to submit it as his or her own.
Unintentional plagiarism, which is also punishable, may exist when a
student attempts to paraphrase or summarize a source but copies too much from
the source instead of re-writing the ideas in his or her own words; when a
student inadvertently fails to include a parenthetical reference to a source,
although the source is listed among the citations at the end of the paper; when
a student fails to put quotation marks around quoted material; when a student
relies too heavily on external sources, thus expressing few or none of his or
her own ideas.
These examples are not all inclusive of every possible form of plagiarism
and should not be considered as such.
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