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Hello, my name is Amie Schaumberg, and welcome to ENG 251: Survey of World Literature, Part I.
In this course we're going to be covering a lot of literature from throughout the world, starting in
the early civilizations all the way through the mid 1600's.
This means that we're going to be looking at a lot of different materials from very diverse times and cultures.
It's all very interesting, and hopefully entertaining as well,
but before we get to the fun stuff we first have to go over some basics for the course.
Since this is an online course, a lot of the material is going to be up to you.
And it's really up to you to keep track of all the assignments, and the best way to do that is to go to the menus on the side,
print off the syllabus, read it, love it, sleep with it under your pillow, make sure you have it available to you at all times
because that's going to tell you all of the requirements for the course
and the assignments you'll need to be keeping up with.
Now, in addition to your weekly readings, you're going to have a weekly Reading Journal.
This is a 1-2 page writing assignment on any of the literature we cover that week
or all of the literature we cover that week, if you're so inspired,
and it can really take pretty much any form that you want it to. It can be argumentative. It can be reflective.
It can just be about how you feel about the literature.
By the way saying that 'I absolutely hated this' is a pertinent response as long as you can tell me why.
So the Reading Journal really is just your response, your time to reflect and discuss the literature.
You'll also be doing Discussion Board posts every week, and responding to at least two of your classmates'
discussion posts as you go along.
You'll have Critical Reading Questions for each reading assignment,
and three times throughout the semester you'll have essays to write. Each one of these essays is going to be argumentative,
meaning a persuasive essay, analyzing the literature. So this is going to be different from your Reading Journal,
instead of just how you fell about the literature, focues on you, this is all going to be about the text.
You'll also, of course, have a comprehensive Final Exam
at the very end of the course.
Now, just because this is an online course,
this does not mean that you are on your own. You're welcome to contact me at anytime throughout the semester by phone, by e-mail,
you can always drop by my office hours if you're on campus or, if you prefer,
I'll also be logged onto Blackboard IM, Instant Messenging, any time I have scheduled office hours.
You can find these in the syllabus or over in the side bar under "Instructor Information."
If you've never use Blackboard IM (it's very, very useful, very, very easy), you can shoot me an e-mail, and i'll talk you through it
or if you want to talk to someone who actually knows what they're doing you can always contact our IT people as well.