Attendance at screenings, extensions, integrity, and the rules about using a language somebody else already built.
Screenings are compulsory#
Eleven of the twelve teaching weeks have a film attached, and watching it is compulsory.
This is unusual and it is deliberate. The lecture is taught on the assumption that you have seen the film, and the workshop on the assumption that you have been to the lecture. The Weekly Build Log then asks what the film changed in your language.
You do not have to attend the scheduled screening. You do have to watch the film in full before the Monday lecture. Where you watch it is up to you.
If you cannot watch a particular film#
Tell Marisol before the week begins, not after. Two of the films carry content that some students will reasonably not want to sit through, and there is an alternative screening for every week of the course that covers the same subsystem. Arranging one is routine and requires no explanation from you.
Nothing on this course requires you to watch something that will harm you. It does require you to have watched something, and to have done the work.
Extensions and late work#
Ask before the deadline. An extension requested in advance is usually granted; the same request after the due date is much harder to approve.
The Weekly Build Log is the exception and cannot be extended, because its weekly deadlines are what is being assessed. The entry is meant to record what you thought that week, with the film fresh, so an entry written five weeks later is no longer the same piece of work.
Integrity#
Submit a language you built.
The obvious version of the rule is that Quenya, Klingon, Dothraki, Na’vi and every other language studied on this course belong to their creators, and handing one in as your own is plagiarism. That case is rare and straightforward.
The interesting case is borrowing, which this course actively encourages. Every invented language borrows — from real languages, from other invented ones, from whatever its author was reading. Herbert borrowed heavily and the result is not diminished by it. What is required is that you write down what you took and where from. The Portfolio and The Language both ask for this explicitly. An undeclared borrowing is a breach; a declared one is good practice.
Generative tools#
You may use AI tools on this course. You must say where you used them, and you must check their output against the rest of your language.
A model will produce a plausible phoneme inventory in seconds. It will also produce one that contradicts your own syllable structure, because it is not tracking the decisions you made in earlier weeks. The crit is designed to show up exactly that kind of inconsistency.
So where you have used a tool, say so, and say what you did with its output. Using one to check your own work for consistency is sensible. Using one in place of making the decisions yourself will not hold up in week twelve.
Getting help#
Workshop first. It is three hours a week with two tutors, and it is the right place to work through a problem with your language in front of you. Almost nothing about your own language is better handled by email.
For anything that is not about your language — enrolment, adjustments, extensions, or something going wrong outside the course — email Marisol directly, and do it as early as you can.
If you have a registered access plan, it applies here in full, including to the screening requirement and to the crit. Talk to us in week one so the arrangements are made before they are needed rather than after.