Exam day is almost here...

Dear 803 Students,

We have spent some time preparing for the upcoming Exam on Thursday, October 14^th. I would like to post some reminders and test-taking advice for you now. I hope you will agree that this exam is an important learning experience. Remember, just like being nervous before a baseball game, a little bit of nervousness before a test is a good thing!

First, the exam notice you got last week explains what is covered. In brief, we had four short stories, part of a novel, and materials in class. The test has both a multiple choice part and a writing section to be finished in 80 minutes together, and these two parts will be averaged. Here are the details:

From your Holt McDougal Grade 8 Literature textbook, here are the stories:

1 The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry p. 52-61 – will test reading (“conflict and resolution”)

2 The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe p. 82-87 – will test reading (“suspense”)

3 Rules of the Game by Amy Tan p. 230-242 – will test vocab, themes, & reading (“point of view”)

4 Hallucination by Isaac Asimov p. 344-365 – will test vocab & themes; no reading questions on Exam, but the textbook “setting” questions may help you with the writing exam.

Also, there were two handouts you need to review. One was The 5 Elements of Western Literature. That is the source of most of your grammar questions. We agreed to test number (singular & plural nouns), recognizing active & passive voice, and gender (masculine or male, and feminine or female). Here are some examples we discussed:

For nouns, CACTUS is an example of a word that is singular. Strange plant, strange word! It comes from Latin. So if you want to make it plural, you should say CACTI. In some areas today, it has become acceptable to also say CACTUSES. But some of us don’t like that one. It should be “cacti” if you ask me.

Another important one from Latin is ALUMNUS. If you are a guy, when you graduate, that is what they call you. If you are a lady, then it is ALUMNA. Yes, we use these in English! If it is a group, with both men and women, then ALUMNI is the right word, and that is the one we usually hear. However, if the group of graduates is made up of only females, then the proper word is ALUMNAE, and it is pronounced ALUMNAE.

OK, active-passive – to recognize passive, you need a BE verb plus the “PP” or past participle. IS BROKEN.  ARE FINISHED. My mug IS BROKEN. We ARE FINISHED talking about the passive voice now.

Gender, well, you know prince, princess, waiter and waitress, and which one is male, which one is female. Also remember that there used to be the words steward and stewardess, but now we just say “flight attendant” for either a male or female person doing that job now. It changed because people thought it would be fair (or better) to say it that way.

Now, about Ender’s Game – please remember that we agreed to test only Units 1 to 9, and NOT to use chapter 10 as it says on the announcement. You will see Ender’s Game vocab from chapters 6 and 9 only on the multiple choice part. And you will have one or two essays about it on the writing test. Be ready for two – we spent more time on this than anything else! Use the handout I gave you that summarizes each chapter and discusses the themes, or use online sources if you need to do so. Please NEVER rely on the movie as a shortcut to understanding the book, because there are too many differences.

I want to discuss the bottom of the Exam announcement:

Writing test will include: WRITING QUESTIONS ARE ON THE MULTIPLE CHOICE SECTION!

Research Writing Workshop Evaluating Sources p. 1071-1072   THERE IS A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION ON THIS

Writing Process Workshop p. 21  THERE IS A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION ON THIS

Questions about how to make a blog, gadgets, leaving comments, or responding to opinions on blogs. THERE IS A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION ON THIS

How to write an informative paper: avoid personal opinions, summarize, how to make a Works Cited area. MAYBE...PROBABLY NOTHING ON WORKS CITED

Format for emailing written homework.  NO, FORGET IT

How to write a Character Sheet Trait.  NO, FORGET IT

Also remember that format where there is a sentence, and you have to say if the underlined word in the sentence is used correctly or not:

____ 1 We discussed themes, or where the story happens, about Ender’s Game in class today.

            A  Used correctly     B Not used correctly

The answer here would be B, not used correctly, because “theme” means the underlying message, or big idea, that the author is trying to tell us about life. The sentence says “where a story happens” and that is the definition of “setting.” But we did briefly discuss it in class today. Now look at this format – what if you need to see if the word is used correctly, AND the sentence (or statement) is accurate?

____ 2 We discuss themes, or where the story happens, and Ender’s Game every day in class.

A Used correctly and True sentence  
B Used correctly and False sentence  
C Not used correctly and True sentence  
D Not used correctly and  False sentence

                                                             

Now we would have to say the answer is D, because not only is the word used incorrectly, but the sentence is also inaccurate. We do not discuss Ender’s Game themes EVERY day. OK? So I know there are about 4 questions like this on the multiple choice test. So they are testing vocab and another subject, perhaps reading or writing.

Finally, I want to let you know how many questions there are. For the multiple choice test, there are 40 questions. You have 25 questions on vocabulary, 10 grammar questions, and 5 reading questions. The percentages for that test are – vocab = 58%, grammar = 28%, and reading = 14%. Then there is the writing test. I will just say 8 questions there, as we discussed. The first 5 are pictures for which you need to use 2 or 3 words to write a sentence. The second question type, called questions 6 to 7 (but really 1 question) is a short answer question about one of the short stories (either Rules of the Game or Hallucination), and the longer essay of 140 words is a comparison of something in two stories. It will either be the two short stories just mentioned or one of those and the novel. The writing test is averaged with the multiple choice exam. Good luck!

As for advice, the best brief pieces of test-taking advice I can give you are these:

1 Get enough sleep one and two nights before the Exam

2 Eat breakfast that day, and have a snack before the test. Avoid bread or sugar, but make it a fruit like guava that is absorbed slowly into your blood, or maybe something with meat or protein.

3 Use a watch to pace yourself. If you are spending too much time on a question leave it. Come back.

4 Do hard or long parts first, then go back for short and easy parts. For the writing test, I recommend doing the long one first and then the short one. But you must use a watch to check the time!

5 Some students will answer questions on their test paper in groups, and then fill in the circles on their multiple choice paper answer sheet in groups. Maybe you can do sections or 8 to 10 questions at a time. When you fill in the circles, do that carefully! I highly recommend stopping to do that when you get to a hard question you do not know how to answer. Then stop and fill in several circles and let your brain just do the circles while it “thinks” about that in a relaxed way. When you come back to the hard question, maybe you will suddenly know the answer!