Sci Man

Hi there!

ME: Tony JOLLEY

Email: tjolley@gmail.com

website: www.tonyversity.com/students

(N.B. No login / no password)

first of all, let's get the 'fear thing' over quickly, shall we?

1. this is not going to be a 'learn 4 pages of vocabulary' and 'don't speak if you think you might make a mistake' class:– I am not worried about you making a few mistakes as long as your meaning is clear and you can only get used to speaking in a foreign language if you accept you may make some mistakes: it is a matter of confidence and understanding that your interlocutor will be more impressed with your willingness to speak his/her language reasonably than worried by your occasional errors.
2. we are going to work together to give you the confidence to use the English you already have in the contexts in which, given your chosen career interet, you are likely to need and to want to use it.
3. My French may well be worse than your English – so I DO know EXACTLY how you feel, believe me!  To live and work here, however, I have had to get over the fact that sometimes I make errors and that people might notice them!  Generally people in whose language you are working are both sympathetic and understanding and more often than not impressed by your ability to communicate.

So what are we going to be doing?

• We will be working in blocks of three (occasionally four) weeks on subjects and projects which relate to your degree and your future career.
• The normal format for the block will be
  • Wk 1. I set up the block with a keynote mini-lecture and some guidance, then you begin work.
  • Wk 2. You continue to work and I interact with you looking at your progress.
  • Wk 3. You present (in some formor other) your thoughts / findings / opinions / conclusions / recommendations and then receive feedback from me

N.B. This will often involve doing some research online, so if you could kindly bring with you your laptops, that would help.  You won't need one each, but one between three or four would be about right.

Assessment.

As far as I am aware from Course Management, this unit may be assessed by means of coursework.  You will therefore engage in various sorts of dimensions of activities which I will assess (usually one item per block):

• individual / team / group
• written / oral
• considering an issue from the outside: essay / report OR from the inside: a role play.

Tutor Expectations (My expectations of You)

• that you attend: I consider this class to be professional and I will treat you accordingly.  Were you at work you would turn up on time every morning and do a full day's work.  I expect the same from you.  If you really can't attend by reason of illness, then fair enough, we are all ill at some time or another, but it will need proper certification and (if you are working as part of a team) you will need to notify me and the other members of the team in advance.
• that you participate: language is first and foremost: spoken, so I will be looking to see and hear you participate in English.If we are working in teams / groups, I will expect each and every team member to contribute equally in oral/written/presentational terms.  In team and groupwork I generally commence with a 'base mark' and then I may well moderate this up and down in recognition of conspicuous (positive or negative) contributions!
• that whenever you furnish me with work, it is in fact your own and not 'lifted' from the www.  I am quite adept at catching those who try not only to cheat on their subject, the real author and their tutors but on their own collegues as well. Citation without attribution = plagiarism, remember… and plagiarism can get you excluded from your university studies.
• that you seek to improve: that will mean taking helpful and positive critique of your work, welcoming it and working with it.
• that you do not consult email or telephones during class – no-one in my role would find such activity anything less than monumentally disrespectful at worst and distracting at best.  I have excluded students from my classes who have do this – so please be warned.
• that submission dates for assignments and presentation dates be respected. In the commercial and professsional world, failure to hit a deadline is a life and death affair. I will operate in the same manner: failure to submit by the designated date = 0/20 unless the Course Manager has evidence in his hand and is prepared to confirm that your absence was necessary.
• Above all that you find the necessary motivation to try to engage with the subject, to learn and to develop your capabilities.  I can try to be 'interesting', but it is your responsibility to be 'interested'

Your Expexctations of Me.

First of all I should say that it is only fair that you should have some reasonable expectations of your tutor based upon teaching professionalism and the subject content.  Here is what I believe you can and should expect of me:

• that I will turn up for classes promptly. Please note however, that I also teach on the Illberg campus, at Colmar and Lörrach and moving between these can occasionally give rise to traffic problems.  If I am going to be more than 10 minutes late I will try to get a message to you via the coure office.
• if for any reason I cannot make the class: illness etc, I will endeavour to get a message to you before the class if humanly possible via the course office.
• that I will give you as much feedback as is possible to enable you to improve.  I never liked the teacher who wrote on my assignment: "12/20 – could do better", because I thought I had done my best and I was completely at a loss to understand what the teacher was looking for and where I had lost those crucial 8 points.
• you should call me 'Tony', rather than Mr JOLLEY: in the Anglophone world you will find most of your colleagues and even your bosses will call you by your first name and expect you to do likewise.
• I will endeavour to make your classes interesting and relevent – my background is in management (Research and Development Manager of a public/private enterprise in the UK and in managing international academic programmes).
• I will try to build you up/ encourage you (as opposed to pulling you down for your occasional errors). As my father was wont to say: "The crime isn't making the mitake – it's not learning from it!".
• I am prepared to use the whole marking scale: if your work is as brilliant as I can possibly expect it to be at your level, I have no problem with a mark of 20/20.  If, on the other hand, you produce something that your boss would not accept in a million years, then I am not afraid of using 0 or 1 / 20!   Remember, however, that in the working world you will not be measured on the basis of 'input' (how much time and effort you invested), but rather by 'output' (whether or not you hit the target and delivered as required)…. as someone once famouly put it: "Don't tell me about the labour pains – show me the baby!"…

Some Questions for today's class.

Although I will be doing a lot of talking in this first class (in future there will be much less!), I will perhaps ask you a number of questions:

• to introduce yourself and give me an idea of your wider interests, sports, hobbies, pastimes etc.
• to explain to me the nature of your interest in matters of business and the sorts of sectors and functions in which you see yourself working in the future.

MINI TASK for our next meeting.

IMAGINE.   You have just been appointed to your first job / SciMan work experience (stage) and your employer asks you to write a piece about yourself for their website / company magazine introducing yourself. 

NOW write this piece, in English, .  Just 300 – 500 words should be enough.  Try to make it 'punchy' and to mix the professional and the personal to make it interesting to read.   Come prepared to read this out in class and to discuss it with the rest of the group.  I will collect this in to give me an idea of the range of English ability in the class.  Please do the best you can without resorting to Google Translator and Babelfish – I want to get an idea of your abilities in English!!  Thanks.