GRADING RUBRIC FOR VIDEO COMMENTARIES

The grade for the commentary is based mainly on your intellectual judgments and reactions to the cultural content of the video. The purpose of the exercise is to learn how to look critically at another culture, to focus your full critical attention and your personal experience on the French culture presented in the video: observe, compare, discriminate, judge, and comment.

No late commentaries will be accepted. If you are absent or if you cannot submit the video commentary by the last due date, you must contact the instructor and request an extension. If there is no request and/or no extension, a grade of “0” will be assigned.

Each video commentary is worth a maximum of 50 points. You will lose points for a commentary that is too long or too short, that is written in an informal or colloquial style, or that has not been proofread for errors, that summarizes the video, that gives personal emotional reactions without analysis, etc. Here are the criteria:

• Length: appropriate? not too short? not too long?
• Style and language: formal, not colloquial! good sentence structure? spelling? punctuation?
• Organization: logical development from introduction to conclusion.
• Observation: how well did the student observe the video and report what he observed?
• Insight and critical judgments: connections with other phenomena, other cultures? generalizations about French culture?

Avoid, at all cost:

• Retelling or summarizing the story.
• Saying whether you liked it or not
• B.S.
• Use of language, vocabulary, ideas, that are not your own, e.g., from the internet.