Studying in NYU

Attendance and punctuality

You are required to attend all course sessions. Your attendance will be marked daily and it accounts for 10 percent of your final course grade.

If you do not attend at least 90 percent of course sessions, the following consequences will apply:

  • You will not be eligible to renew your student pass;
  • You will be barred from the final examination;
  • The school will not issue you with a Certificate of Attendance;

You may also be subject to further disciplinary action by the school.

In addition, the Immigration Act (Chapter 133, Regulation 2L) also requires the school to inform the Immigration and Checkpoints authority if student pass holders are absent for 7 or more consecutive days, or if their attendance falls below 90 percent in any calendar month.

You will not be penalised if your absence is authorised by the school. You may apply, in advance and in writing, for an authorised absence for the following reasons:

  • Medical or dental appointments with a licensed practitioner (you must present a medical or dental certificate);
  • Grave illness or death of a close relative;
  • Performance of religious duties;
  • Graduation ceremony of a recognised educational institution;
  • Interview for a job or place at a recognised educational institution;
  • Participation in a regional or national event

In addition, absence related to an illness is considered an authorised absence if the absence is documented by a certificate from a licensed medical practitioner.

Punctuality

Punctuality is an important life skill. You are expected to be in class on time. Being late is disrespectful to the instructor and your fellow students. You will disrupt the lesson in progress and lose valuable instruction time.

Your participation in class will count in your final course grade. If you are late, you will be assessed as not participating fully in class activities. If you are more than half an hour late, you will be considered to be absent without authorisation. You will not be allowed to participate in the course session for that day.

Course workload

Your probably know that you will have to work hard at your course. The hard work you put in will lead to success. The workload for your course requires you to spend a few hours a day on your assignments and self-study.

You will be assigned homework on most days. Usually, this will be an opportunity for review and practice the work covered in class. We expect you to complete the daily homework after class every day. The course instructor will discuss the answers on the following day.

If you're in an English class, there is a major weekly writing assignment to complete. These assignments will account for 30 percent of your final course grade, so we expect everyone to work hard at them. These assignments will help you write better English, which will be a very important skill in your education and career.

Apart from completing your assignments, we expect everyone to spend at least an hour every day studying and preparing for the next day's lessons.

Course materials and educational technology

You would already have collected your course textbooks from the administrators. In addition to the textbooks, we will be using many other supplementary materials to give you the best possible course experience.

Apart from books, we will be using a great deal of educational technology, including audio visual materials and the Internet. There is a school-wide wireless Internet network. We will be using the wi-fi network for our lessons, and you can also log on to the network with your laptops and mobile phones during break and after class. We hope you will find our materials both interesting and educational.

Course assessment

Your grade in this course will be based on the following components:

  • Attendance and participation in class (10 percent) Your grade in this area will be based on class attendance and the quality of your classroom participation;

  • Writing assignments (30 percent) The ability to write English will be very important as you continue your studies and pursue a career in a country where English is widely used. You will receive 8 major writing assignments in this course. These assignments are very important, as you will note from the 30 percent weighting towards your final course grade. You are expected to consider the requirements of each assignment carefully, and devote a few hours to completing each assignment.

  • Midterm and final examinations (20 and 40 percent respectively) You are required to sit for two examinations, one midway through your course, and the other towards the end. The examination will contain both a written and an oral component. You will be tested on your ability to understand both spoken and written English, as well your ability to speak and write English yourself. More information on the examinations is given in the next section.

Plagiarism

When doing your assignments, you must not take sentences or paragraphs or even whole articles written by someone else and pass it off as your own work without acknowledging the author or the original source. This is cheating and will not be condoned by the school. Disciplinary action will be taken against anyone caught plagiarising material for their assignments.

The person who benefits from doing an assignment is yourself, not your instructor or someone else. The grade you get for an assignment tells you how much you have progressed, and how far you still have to go. In the same way, a student who plagiarises material hurts himself, not anyone else.

Grading of assignments

Your graded assignment will be returned to you within 10 days. Your instructor will conduct a debrief after grading the assignment to evaluate the progress of the class towards meeting the learning objectives of the course. Your instructor will also meet with each student individually to discuss their performance on the assignment.

Student survey

A student survey will be conducted once during your course. This is an opportunity for you to tell us about your experience with us. Your feedback will help us to serve our students better.

You won't have to give us your name when you complete the student survey. This will make it easier for you to tell us exactly what you think.