English 101

Final Exam Advice

Hello my friends! Your final exam is scheduled for 8am - 10am, Friday, December 12 in Social Sciences room 206 (both sections will meet there and then so don't let the unfamiliar faces surprise you!).

For the exam, you need to bring a blue book and a writing instrument. You may also want to bring any notes or possible outlines you have developed, the articles and study questions (hilighted, underlined, etc), a dictionary, your _Conversations_ book or a copy of any materials you might want to incorporate into your essays.

I am not going to explicate the essays for you or tell you what I think you should write. However, here are some technical guidelines for the essay I would like to recommend for you:

• Come to the exam having read those two essays carefully and thoroughly. Make sure you know what the authors' were attempting to accomplish, what the strategies they used to address their purposes were, who the audiences were. Make sure you can define Liberal Education (there is no "right" answer, but there needs to be AN answer). Make sure you understand what the similarities and the differences between the articles are. Make sure you have an opinion on the issue.

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• Before going to the exam, practice writing, or at least outlining, a couple different responses to the questions. You don't know what the questions will be, but you can take some pretty educated guesses. Chances are, your practice essays will be at least partially useful for the final essay.

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• In the final, READ the questions CAREFULLY. Do not read the first sentence of a question and go off writing without thinking through the question and your response. If you decide to answer a question and then write an essay which has nothing to do with the question, you will be graded accordingly (unless you have somehow accounted for your "unique" path in the body of the essay itself). The questions will ask you to do several things. The question may ask you to analyze an article and write an argument in response to it. That means you need to do both.
  NOTE: when you choose a question, write the number of the question on your blue book so I can determine which question you chose to respond to.

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• This exam asks you to consider the ways all the strategies for writing we have talked about through the semester. You need to think about how all the strategies work together and get combined. I would advise you to consider relating what you learned (?) this semester as you write the essay.

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• I will be grading this essays rather quickly. The essay must have a thesis statement/claim that is the focus of the essay. I expect to see that thesis/claim early in the introductory materials and I expect the rest of the essay to develop, support, prove that thesis. I would prefer that these essays be fairly straightforward and easy for me to follow. (Remember to consider the rhetorical situation as you write.)

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• The above advice, however, does not mean I want an under-developed essay. I expect the assertions you make to supported with strong evidence, examples from the articles and other sources (if you like), and your own personal experience. I expect you to build a strong case for the argument that you make.

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• We have gone over citing sources. I expect you to integrate quotes and summary and paraphrase into this essay. If you cite a source, make sure it is clear who the author is, what the article is, and what the page number is. You are not required to do a works cited page for the essay, but you do need to give me proper citation within the essay itself.

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• Your final will be graded on:
  thesis/claim
  development source and evidence citation
  integration of all the strategies we have used this semester (personal narrative, rhetorical analysis, persuasion)

Good luck. Don't forget that your final is worth 100 points (10% of your grade). I will give you your copies of the terms you have defined in class. I will of course be happy to answer any questions about what I have posted here.