Term Two Exam Musings

The Second Exam for the first semester is around the corner, so here are a few helps for all of you.  First, the Literature exam is on November 29^th, which is this coming Tuesday. Your announcement said either Tuesday or Wednesday, because the Department of Foreign Languages could not confirm the exact date for me before I printed out the announcement. However, I did find out that Tuesday is your day, so from now until then we should focus only on the exam and not on improving homework scores or the classroom grade.

Recall that the exam makes up half of your overall grade, and the classroom grade makes up the other half. Out of the classroom grade, homework is worth 40%, quizzes are worth 40%, and participation is worth 20%. The exam grade is divided into two parts. The multiple choice exam is worth 50% and the writing exam is worth 50%. The multiple choice test has 50 questions this time, with 25 questions on vocab, 15 on grammar, and 10 on reading. The writing test has 3 parts. The first has 5 pictures from Quizlet vocabulary, and you need to write 5 sentences using 2 or 3 vocabulary words from the stories. The second part is a short answer question based on one of your readings, and you should respond with 3 sentences. The third part is a longer opinion essay for which you write 160 words comparing two of your reading selections and use one of the literary terms.

I suggest you make use of the links near your student blogs. There is the list of topics on the exam, which has the exact vocabulary words on the exam. A student asked me about the Quizlet 1 and Quizlet 2 vocab lists that I put there for some of the readings. The Quizlet 2 list was only to help you read the story, and not for testing! Those will not be on the test! Also, Ender’s Game will not be on the writing test this time except that it IS tested for vocabulary. That means the first part where there are five sentences will include Ender’s vocabulary. The multiple choice test will include Ender’s vocabulary too, both within the 25 vocab questions and as one of the reading selections. The reading excerpt for Ender’s Game tests literary terms related to that passage. Don’t forget to study the Reading Challenge readings you had in your grammar book as they will be tested too for your multiple choice reading section. Otherwise, both the stories and poetry will be tested in the reading section.

OK, a comment about your classroom grade. I will be putting in a participation and effort score this weekend. I think your class has been splendid when it comes to the effort you have put in, so congratulations! The other thing is improving your notebook grade, writing, or blogs. I think right now just focus on exams. But I will be using the blog 3 rubric today to check up on everyone’s blogs, and if something needs correcting, there should be time for you to fix it after exams and before I need to enter in grades with the school. Let’s not leave a lot of things like this, however, or expect that it can be done, because officially once exams start that is the end of the classroom stuff, and the day after exams the next term begins. After exams, there is more I want to say to you about future readings, but let’s not talk about it right now. Enjoy your preparations and the rest of the weekend!