Class expectations

Mr. Caron, in Northwestern Canada

Monday February 17th, 2020

Attendance call

I do not do WeChat video conversations, only audio conversations.

This is because most of the time, I am still in my pajamas.

WeChat is for greetings, assistance and questions / Emails is for assignment submissions.

Do not use email to thank the teacher. It makes it look like I have too many emails to answer.

For WeChat conversations and messages, be aware that I am located in the Pacific Daylight Saving Time Zone. This is the same time as Vancouver or Los Angeles. This is why communications with me will always be occurring in the morning or early afternoon (from 4am to 4pm) and NEVER in the evening.

For emails: When you submit an assignment, you must include;

- your Western name, followed by your Chinese name in Pinyin - your class and the period for which it is scheduled for- the name of the file that you send should be the name of the assignment- assignments not meeting minimum size or exceeding maximum will not be accepted.

Your assignments will be accepted in these three formats;

- pictures; can be in jpeg, gif, bmp or png,- audio files should be in mp3 attached to the email, or linked from a Chinese clouds.- texts should be in Microsoft Word Document,

o Mac documents in the *.pages format will NOT be marked.

Your documents should be sent in Microsoft Word. You ABSOLUTELY need to use Spell Check. Assignments that do not have space after a period (.) or a comma (,) will not be

marked. The format to send in your Microsoft Word document is Times New Roman (or Arial) font 12 with triple interline (this allows me space for corrections).

Online Realities

In regular classes, your teacher and other students can motivate you. When you do online classes, the outside motivations are not so present. In class you may want to impress the teacher or compete with other students, but online it is different. You are now expected to do way more autonomous work. The teacher’s role is also very different. As an online teacher, I use most of my time dealing with grading assignments.

Your New Teacher

Just for you to know; English is not my first language. And I, just like you, struggled in learning English at your age. I am part of a group referred to as “French Canadians” or “Quebecois”; we are the descendants of New France residents; people who came from northern France 400 years ago, and mixed with the local Native populations.

I believed that learning another language is so important that I made a career out of teaching students another language. I do speak other languages myself; standard French and many sub-dialects of French, Spanish and to a lesser extent Russian and Cree. As for Chinese, my knowledge is quite minimal (but I can use an online translator too).

I find that the pronunciation in another language is extremely important, because foreigners will judge your intelligence based on your ability to pronounce words correctly in English. Foreigners with a low IQ will be your worse judges. [This must be why, I will be the one pointing out your pronunciation mistakes).

Good Things, so far

I have been dealing / communicating with great students.

Bad Things

There have been students submitting assignments done by other students. Students submitting work NOT being within the parameters of the requirements for the assignment. Some students, believing that there was so little to do for the class, that they waited until the last minute, and submitted assignments that were not accepted by the teacher. Many students did not submit anything at all. Some students kept on resubmitting the same assignment, which was sent back to them as it was not acceptable.

Conclusion

In all, students are getting today, as an additional day, to complete the work as posted on the Forum. Early, Tuesday morning, the work for the second week will be posted.