The hour exam is October 24. It will be given in your discussion sections. We won't schedule a make-up exam, so plan to take it at this time. It will be a fifty-minute "identification" exam. No books or notes. The TAs will provide exam booklets.
The exam handout will present twelve short numbered passages from the eight authors assigned between Sept. 29 and Oct. 22 (starting with Washington Irving, ending with Margaret Fuller). All eight will be on the exam, some more than once. The passages will be straightforward, chosen for their representativeness to the author, the themes discussed in lecture, and the points developed in your responses. If you’ve been doing the reading and going to lecture and discussion—and if you study enough to refresh your memory—you’ll probably do well.
The instruction will read: "Choose nine quotations from the following twelve; name the author and the work, and develop one relevant, significant point connecting this particular quotation to a more general point of your choosing."
Each answer should have three parts:
1) the name of the author of the quotation (first and last names, please). [5 points]
2) the name of the work from which the quotation comes (short titles are acceptable). [3 points]
3) some sentences connecting the quotation to a general idea that you see in it. This idea may come from lecture, discussion, your responses, your thinking about the material. The grading will not favor one source over any other. The important thing is to show a connection between the what and the why: what you see in the passage, and why you see it. This is done by pointing to something specific in the passage. Your comment might explain how the selected quote fits into the work overall; or how it connects to the author's writings more generally as we've studied them in 255; or to a theme or issue shared by several of the writers studied in 255; or to a literary or intellectual or historical movement we've talked about. You can write about style, theme, structure, language, etc. [12 points]
You may combine quotes into longer answers, but there must be an identified point and connection made for each quotation in this longer answer; and you must give the number for every quote that you write about. It’s probably easier to write nine separate answers.
Two things not to do: 1) do not merely re-state (paraphrase) the quote’s content; you need to go beyond that, as in your responses. 2) do not make a generalization without tying it to something specific in the quote.)
It is a good idea to read through the quotations quickly and choose your nine before starting to write. Then, try to divide your writing time equally among the answers, so that you'll write approximately the same amount (around five minutes) for each.
Be sure the numbers on your answers match the numbers on the exam page. Otherwise you will mis-identify the quotation! (The exams for the 1 P.M. and 2 P.M. sections will be different.)
EXAMPLE:
Passage: "What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? Might not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say, 'Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness, but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voice.'"
Here are seven possible approaches to this passage: All answers would begin by naming the author: William Bradford, and the work from which the passage comes: Of Plymouth Plantation. Among possible connections: 1) you could point out that the opening sentence makes clear Bradford's belief that the success of the first generation of Puritans was owing to God's grace not their own efforts: "what could now sustain them"; 2) you could say he is appreciating his ancestors by calling attention to the correct behavior of the "Fathers" who recognized their debt to God (in the second sentence); 3) you could note Bradford's calling these people "Englishmen" and suggest what that means; 4) point out that he calls the new world a wilderness not a paradise and consider the implications of this; 5) mention that Bradford suggests that the descendants may be less pious than their fathers (he talks about what the children "ought" to do), thus implying decline; 6) you could point out his typical use of a quote from the Bible; 7) you could place the quotation in the selection as coming after Bradford has described the desolate situation that they found when they landed. Etc. Etc. Every quotation offers numerous possibilities.
As with the responses and papers, the key to a good answer is to make the connection persuasively. Because even a short passage usually offers multiple possibilities, you need to be specific about showing what in the passage led you to your particular answer. As you’ll see above, in every case the proposed identification makes specific reference to a segment of the passage, usually quoting a word or phrase. Because these specificities convey the connection, they are crucial to the design of a good answer. If you simply wrote that the passage shows Bradford’s Puritan mind set and stopped there (an unsupported generalization), you would not get credit. If you simply wrote that Bradford thanks God for the Puritan’s success (paraphrase), you would not get credit.
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Grading:
Each answer will count a total of 20 points, for an overall total of 180 points: 5 for the correct author, 3 for the correct work, 12 for the connection. You will get more or less of the 12 points depending on the effectiveness of your explanation.
The numerical scores will translate into letter grades as follows:
A = from 161 - 180 (A = 170-180, A- = 161-170)
B = from 143 - 160 (B+ = 155-160, B = 149-154, B- = 143-148)
C = from 125 - 142 (C+ = 137-142, C = 131-136, C- = 125-130)
D = from 105 - 124 (D+ = 119-124, D = 112-118, D = 105-111)
F: 104 & below