Welcome Podcast Transcription

Welcome!

Podcast

Beth Ritter-Guth

Hi, my name is Beth Ritter-Guth. I teach English full-time at Lehigh-Carbon Community College in Schnecksville, PA. This is just a hello for my students in English 211, Brit Lit II, offered in the second six-week summer session at L-Tri-C.


I just want to take a few seconds to go through, with you, the syllabus and my expectations of you in this course and hopefully that won't take too long. All of this information is available to you on the Wiki, which you must have found, because you're listening to this. If you click on the link on the syllabus, you'll see just the rules and regulations of the course. You'll see my office number. I'm full time at L-Tri-C so I have an office, although I'm not there in the summer, but I can be if we need to meet. It talks about the course description and my grading philosophy. You can read through that at your leisure. There will be a few opportunities for extra credit. And, of course the policy for academic integrity is included there. I talk about final drafts and how they need to be submitted through WebCT, and talk about student behavior, the ADA policy and the Writing Center. You should take a peek at those materials so you know the rules of the course.


The class blog, which is located on Blogger, is listed next on the Wiki. In order for you to join and be a posting member, you will need to email me an email address you use often so that I can send you an invitation. You are not required to post on the blog. If you would rather respect your privacy, you may answer any discussion post in email to me privately through WebCT.


You then see the course assignment grid and how much each component weighs, as far as your final grade is concerned. There are three essays, two exams, two projects, 10 exploration assignments, and you are graded on your participation, either on the blog or in email to me. I explain the type of assignments that I expect of you in this course and those are just an overview of what the assignments are. For your essays, I expect that you've had English I and/or English II at your home institution or at L-Tri-C, and so I'm expecting that you understand how to write an academic essay. I won't be reviewing thesis development, I won't be reviewing grammar in any cohesive way, because I expect that you've come to me with that sort of preparation.


Your books are in the bookstore, and while you don't need to buy them, because I try to make everything available to you online, you should invest in the Portable Brief Keys for Writers that I have for you there. That comes with a free subscription to tutoring through SmartThinking.com, and if you had to pay for that, you'd have to pay 30 bucks an hour. So it's really a bargain if you think about it. For those that have had me before in Brit Lit 1, you know that I'm a pretty tough grader, so you'll definitely want that support. So I encourage you, if that's the only book you can afford to buy, buy that one, because you'll want that pass code. You also get extra credit for submitting your work to Smart Thinking. You just need to send me their markup copy and you get some gold stars added to your paper. So you want to take advantage of that. I do have some tips here. I would recommend that you read those tips and understand them. An academic essay is never less than 800 words, so that is a key. And then there are rules about using personal pronouns and citations and MLA documentation.


And then the way that I have the Wiki set up, I have it set up that since a six-week course, there are six weeks of instruction. You'll have some readings, you'll have some assignments and you'll be asked to discuss. And you receive points not just for discussing on the blog, but also commenting on the posts of others. If you are submitting through email, you can submit your comments to me about other people's blogs through email if you are choosing that route.


So you'll see that each week has something to do, and this is a six-week course, but you're covering 14 weeks of material. It is a lot of reading. If you don't have the time to commit to the reading then this is perhaps not the course for you. And it is offered in the spring session in a 14-week format. I know that it is sometimes attractive to see a six-week summer course needed, especially for our education majors, but really this course flies through the material and really expects you to be diligent and motivated and responsible for your work.


If you have any questions at any time, please feel free to email me or call me. I'm more than happy to help you. I'll be having surgery the first week of class, so please bear with me. I will try to respond to email through audio, as I won't be able to type. But I will at least try to respond to your questions. I'm available to talk on the phone, and hopefully my recovery will be pretty speedy, so that you're getting the answers that you need. I welcome you to this class. It's going to be a lot of fun. This course starts off with my favorite period, which is the Romantic Period, and some of the greatest stuff ever written in England is written during the Romantic Period in my humble opinion. And we're going to have a lot of fun. We're going to be talking about a lot of heavy topics and a lot of interesting issues and all about the relationships between people and how they're treated, and children and how they're treated, and the relationship between humans and their government, and religion and science. So we have a really crazy quest before us. I look forward to it and I welcome you to this class, and again, if you need anything, just let me know. Thanks.

Transcription by CastingWords