Exam Room
Hi folks,
I just got word from the office that we will be having the midterm exam for Reading & Writing 2 in our regular classroom. (Which I’m told is IH338. If that’s wrong, let’s meet there anyway.) We will meet during our regular classtime, ie. from 12:00-2:00pm on Wednesday, 14 December.
Remember what I said in our last class: if you cannot write a proper 5-paragraph essay, I will be obliged to hold you back — ie. to give you an F grade.
A “proper 5-paragraph essay” for the purposes of this exam includes:
- a hook of some kind in the opening paragraph
- a strong thesis in the opening paragraph, which is re-expressed (preferably in slightly different form) in the concluding paragraph
- three body paragraphs with topic sentences
- a proper body paragraph structure where the paragraph begins with a topic sentence, moves to support the topic sentence with examples, explanation, or evidence (like statistics) and then returns (full circle) to the large theme of the topic sentence
In addition to the 5-praragraph essay structure, you will be responsible for skills related to responding to another text (ie. both of the writing templates we explored, and your ability to paraphrasing another’s writing), and other skills like outlining, drawing a Venn diagram, using proper structure and punctuation for quotations from other texts, and so on.
That sounds like a lot, but you’ve been working on it all semester. Meanwhile, I’m working hard to get some responses to your blog postings. If you wrote fewer than ten essays, you still have time until the 19th of December to get them done. Remember, you need to write ten five-paragraph essays on the blog in order to pass the course as well. I’ll continue writing feedback today, and hopefully finish.
However, if you wrote fewer than 8 essays by today (as of 12 December), you will get feedback on only one of your essays.