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Rules and Regulations

Placement & Progression:

► Students are initially placed into an appropriate ELC level (i.e., Foundations, ELC 1, ELC 2, ELC 3, ELC 4) in accordance with placement policies based on an oral interview and scores from the English section of the College Entrance Exam.

► A minimum score of 60 (70 for postgraduates) is required to pass a course. Students who obtain the minimum score or higher automatically move to the next level.

► A student who obtains a course score of 95 or above may request to “skip” the next level. Skipping a level, however, requires a recommendation from the student’s instructor and permission from the ELC Office. The Executive Director may request an interview with the student.

► A student who does not obtain the minimum score (or who is absent without excuse for the final exam) will be required to repeat the course.

Lateness & Absences:

► UNEXCUSED ABSENCES:

* Students who miss more than 4 class sessions in a course will not pass the course.

  • A class session refers to a 90-minute session.

  • Assignments missed due to absence may receive a grade of 0.

► EXCUSED ABSENCES:

* Absences are normally only “excused” if a student is unable to attend class due to serious illness or is required by the university to be somewhere else.

  • An excused absence does not count toward a student’s total number of absences.

  • An absence may only be excused if the instructor is provided with a written note from a doctor, a doctor’s assistant, or a university administrator.

► LATENESS:

* The instructor may decide on his/her own method of checking attendance. Examples include calling roll, passing around a sheet of paper, giving a quick quiz at the beginning of the lesson, etc.

  • Students who arrive after the instructor has checked attendance may be marked absent for the day.

  • Students who leave class after the instructor has checked attendance may be marked absent for the day.

  • Assignments missed due to lateness may receive a grade of 0.

NOTE: Technically, a student is “late” if he/she arrives even one minute after the designated class starting time (e.g., 8:00, 10:00, etc.). However, a student will not be marked absent unless he/she arrives after the teacher has implemented the chosen method of checking attendance (e.g., calling roll, passing around a sheet of paper, etc.). This method should be implemented within the first five minutes of class.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism can be defined as "the deliberate use of another person’s work in your own work, as if it were your own, without adequate acknowledgement of the original source." Plagiarism is cheating – trying to claim credit for something that is one’s own work – and it poses a serious threat to academic quality and to institutional integrity.

► The following represent different types of plagiarism:

  • Turning in another student’s work as one’s own with or without that student’s knowledge.

  • Turning in a paper written by anyone else as one’s own (including websites).

  • Copying a paper (or parts of a paper) from a source text without proper acknowledgement

  • Copying material from a source text, supplying proper documentation, but leaving out quotation marks.

  • Paraphrasing material from a source text without proper documentation.

► Teachers may deal with cases of plagiarism through the following means:

  • Giving the student a 0 for the assignment.

  • Making the student do the assignment again.

  • Making the student do another more difficult assignment.

  • Giving the student a failing grade for the course.

NOTE: In severe or repeated cases of plagiarism, the ELC will consider invoking the university’s disciplinary procedures, which can lead to the incident being recorded permanently on a student’s academic record.