Text: Deutsche Literatur von der Klassik bis zum
Naturalismus, by Vivian,
Tobin and Lawson.
Course requirements:
- Regular class attendance and successful completion of quizzes and assignments.
- Active participation in class discussion.
- Maintenance of a vocabulary notebook with all new active vocabulary words for each
reading. This will be part of the weekly grade.
- Passing grades on the midterm and the final exam.
- Submission of four 3-4 page essays on historical movements and/or literary works and
oral presentation of the papers to the other students.
Course objectives:
- The student will read history, poetry, short fiction, essays, and/or
excerpted works selected from the nineteenth century.
- The student will increase his/her vocabulary and acquaintance with German idiom and
language structure over the course of several centuries and literary periods through the
reading of unedited works.
- The student will learn how to discuss a number of literary works in German.
- The student will improve his/her writing skills through exercises, oral presentations
and compositions.
- The student will memorize at least two poems in German.
- The student will be able to describe characteristics of nineteenth-century
German literature through a chronological study of social and historical developments,
literary schools and authors.
Methods to be used:
German will be used as the primary means of communication in class and in electronic
communication. Authors and their works will be discussed and analyzed regarding historical
and literary elements. The material covered will form the basis for examinations and
compositions. Representative works from a number of genres will be used, including short
story, lyric poetry, epic poetry, novella, drama, and exerpts of longer prose works.
Grading:
- Daily work, memory work, quizzes, first drafts of compositions, participation and
attendance count for 40% of the final grade.
- Exams and revised compositions make up 60% of the final grade (each composition and
examination counts for 10% if the final grade).
- The compositions will be graded as follows:
- The first version submitted will be graded for grammatical accuracy based on a ratio of
the length of the composition (word count) to the number of errors. This will be recorded
as a regular homework grade.
- The revised version will receive two grades: one for quality of expression and one for
quality of syntax.
- The average of the three grades will be the final grade for the composition.
