There are six (6) sections in this document. Please take the time to read them all carefully! You can also access this page as a Google Doc.
Needless to say, these are unprecedented times which call for extraordinary measures. My goal is to set up a distance learning environment that allows you to set your own pace as you navigate what’s happening in our world and deal with everything else that you have to deal with, in practical and emotional terms. Please don’t ever hesitate to e-mail me, visit via Zoom at preordained times (see below) or non-preordained times via appointment, or leave a message in the GroupMe with any questions, issues, or concerns that you have. We’re all figuring it out as we go; the best we can do is to be here for each other with compassion and patience. And maybe an occasional fuzzy animal picture or meme. Here’s a recent favorite of mine: the woman yelling at cat meme with an ancient twist (by AlexanderPetela on redbubble.com):
While we’re in “new information” mode, check out the course schedule on the website for the topics that would ideally be covered that week with all the materials that you will need for those topics (links to notes on the course website, video lectures recorded either by myself or Prof. Machado, etc.). Because we’re at distance and you may have new concerns at home that you didn’t have on campus (e.g., getting a job, taking care of family members, spotty internet, etc.), you can view these lectures and read the notes at any time; they will remain up for the whole semester. I do suggest, however, that you keep up with the schedule as listed on the course schedule to ensure that topics don’t pile up by the end of the semester. If you have any issues keeping up with the material, please contact me privately so that we can figure out a fair way to guide your path through the course.
Because these resources are asynchronous, meaning that we don’t have to be online at the same time for you to access them, I’m turning our existing class meeting times (8-8:50am or 11-11:50am MWF) into optional drop-in times, analogous to student hours, to clarify any questions that you have about the lectures or concepts or to talk about other requirements of the course, like translations and compositions. I stress: these times are optional, so you only have to join the Zoom meeting (see below) if you have a question that you’d like to clarify or a concept that you’d like more practice with (or even if you’d like to shoot the breeze). If you’d prefer to maintain a sense of normalcy by watching the videos and working with the class notes in our normal class period, I will also have student hours from 2-4pm on Wednesdays and 10:30am to 12:30pm on Thursdays.
These drop-in times and student hours will be administered via Zoom. You should have received two invitations to add recurring events to your Google Calendar: one for our recurring class period, and one for student hours. Please accept the invitations, and then head to https://calendar.google.com to make sure that the class meetings and student hours are showing up in your calendar. In each event, you should see a prompt to “Join Zoom Meeting” — that will be the link to use to join the Zoom meeting for that class period or student hours session. I think I might have botched the Thursday student hour times in particular, so please let me know if you don’t see our class meeting times or the 2-4pm block on Wednesdays or the 10:30am-12:30pm block on Thursdays. Let me know also if you haven’t received the invites (check your spam folder just in case) or if you have issues accepting the invites.
The link for all class meetings and student hours sessions is here.
Please also note that students from the 8am are welcome to drop in on the 11am time and vice versa. If you’d like to get clarity on questions or concepts from a different source or at a different time than when I’m available, Prof. Machado will also be available MWF 9-9:50am via this Google Meet link.
You can also always request a private Zoom meeting outside of the times specified above (MWF 8-8:50am, 11-11:50am; W 2-4pm; Th 10:30am-12:30pm). Just e-mail me and let me know what time and day is good for you!
At the point at which we left off the semester, you completed 16 out of the total 36 daily quizzes for the semester. That means that 20 daily quizzes or about 10% of your semester grade (out of the 18% allotted to daily quizzes) remains to be calculated.
There will be eight (8) more daily quizzes of the kind that we know (graded out of 4 points total on specific grammatical topics, weighted at 0.5% each for the semester) to cover the new material this semester. These will be administered via Google Form, and I will post links to them (with each labeled with the topic that the quiz covers) at the top of this page as well as on the course schedule on the date that I suggest you complete each quiz. Because of the exigencies of distance, I won’t set specific deadlines for each quiz, but the one hard and fast deadline is that all eight daily quizzes must be completed by 11:59pm on M 5/4 (the “last day of classes”).
The remaining 6% of the daily quiz portion of the grade will be determined by three (3) boss quizzes designed to test your mastery of 1) vocabulary and dictionary entries, 2) noun and adjective forms, and 3) verb forms. These quizzes will each be cumulative over LATN 101 and LATN 102 to encompass all the vocab and grammar that we’ve learned over the course of the two semesters.
One very useful resource to prepare for all three of these boss quizzes (aside from your own notes and the resources on our course website) is magistrula.com, which has a number of useful activities to test your knowledge and comprehension of vocab, grammar, and syntax with instant feedback. I’m still playing around with it myself; it’s very customizable and you can target charts, constructions, or concepts that you would like more practice on! Try it out and let me know what you think.
For the vocab boss quiz, you will be asked to fill in missing parts of dictionary entries for all parts of speech. The quizzable material includes the vocabulary from the first semester master vocabulary list and the new second semester master vocabulary list (this new list includes the conjunctions, adverbs, and few adjectives, verbs, and one pronoun that we’re using this semester).
For the noun and adjective boss quiz, you will be asked to decline nouns, adjectives, or noun-adjective pairs into specific cases and numbers or to identify and parse a noun, adjective, or noun-adjective pair. The focus will be on first, second, and third declension nouns and 2-1-2 (including -īus), three-termination, two-termination, one-termination, and irregular adjectives like hic, ille, and ipse. Because the focus will be on declension (rather than vocabulary), you will receive dictionary entries as necessary. To practice your declensions, we recommend using the master lists on the course website and this website (using the dropdown menu to specify either 1st and 2nd declension or 1st, 2nd, and 3rd declension) for instant feedback.
For the verb boss quiz, you will be asked to conjugate verbs into specific person, number, tense, voice, and mood combinations or participle or infinitive forms or to identify the person, number, tense, voice, and mood of a given verbal form (or tense and voice if a participle or infinitive). Because the focus will be on conjugation or participle/infinitive formation (rather than vocabulary), you will receive dictionary entries as necessary. To practice your conjugations, we recommend using the master lists on the course website and this website (except for the verb fieri) for instant feedback.
Each of the boss quizzes will count for 2% of your semester grade. You can attempt each boss quiz up to three times; if you would like a second or third attempt, you must e-mail me directly to request it. All attempts must be completed by 11:59pm on M 5/4 (the last day of classes and also the last day for daily quiz attempts).
Obviously, “attendance” and “participation” is a non-issue when we’re conducting classes at distance and with mostly asynchronous resources, so no need to worry about that element of your semester grade. Everyone gets that 10% of their semester grade automatically, but I encourage you to remain engaged and to participate in drop-in or student hours and to reach out to me whenever you have a question or concern. Another good place to participate and to feel a sense of community over the distance would be our GroupMe group!
Deadlines for individual translations and compositions are now waived since we’re at distance, but I am posting suggested submission dates on the course schedule; please do your best to stick to this suggested schedule so that your assignments do not pile up over the course of the semester. All first passes at translations and compositions must be submitted by 11:59pm on M 5/4 (the last day of classes). All revisions will be due for the 8am section by 11:59pm on Th 5/7 and for the 11am section by 11:59pm on M 5/11 (each is the date for the “final exam” set by the registrar for Spring 2020).
Translations and Compositions #3 and #4 will work as they have in the past: the translations will be assignments where you answer grammatical questions and translate a paragraph of Latin, while the compositions will ask you to compose a paragraph of Latin according to specific instructions.
Translation and Composition #5 will work slightly differently. The translation, in essence, will be a submission of your full translation of a passage of Latin without the grammatical questions to help guide your work. The composition, similarly, will ask you to compose a paragraph of Latin with less guidance than before. We’ll talk about these assignments as they get closer.
EDIT 4/15, 9pm: There will now be no final translation or composition. You will automatically receive those 20 out of 20 on both of those assignments.
Translations will be graded as before (out of 20 points), and revisions of translations will work the same (where the old and the new grade will be averaged together unless the new grade is the same or lower than the old). Compositions, however, will now be graded on a specification system: that means that each composition will be assessed qualitatively rather than quantitatively and graded as either satisfactory or unsatisfactory. A satisfactory grade nets you 20 out of 20 points on that composition. If I assign an unsatisfactory, I will give your composition a provisional grade out of 20 points, and you will be invited to revise the composition according to my suggestions to make it satisfactory. If you do not revise an unsatisfactory composition, the original grade will stand.
The reason for this change is because it will be difficult to offer synchronous feedback on composition exercises, while we have gotten plenty of practice with translation exercises and grammatical analyses over the course of our two semesters. To be clear, I will aim to assign a satisfactory grade to a composition unless the grammatical or syntactic issues in it are pressing enough that I’d like you to take a second pass at it. I will also still mark up satisfactory compositions so that you know what you need to work on.
In terms of getting feedback on and submitting these assignments, please type up your assignments using Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or Pages and submit a document to me. Please do NOT handwrite assignments, take pictures of them, and send them to me.
If you’d like feedback on an assignment before submitting it, please send that document to me via e-mail.
In order to make a final submission on any given assignment, please use this upload portal. I will also make this a persistent link at the top of this page. Using this portal ensures that I have all of your assignments in one place, whereas I might lose track of them if you e-mail them to me.
Once we’re past the “new information” part of the course (from about W 4/15 on), there will be no more recorded videos or notes for you to watch or ingest and it’ll be time to start applying what you’ve learned! Your main tasks will be to complete translation and composition 5 and the final translation and composition, which, as mentioned above, will have less grammatical help than previous assignments. I will be available during the drop-in times and student hours (or by appointment) to help guide you through any difficult constructions or fine-tune any translations or compositions, but the onus will largely be on you to work your way through!
