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LITR 4231
Early American Literature Final Exam Assignment |
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Format:
Open-book, open-notebook
Options for taking exam:
- in-class:
4-6:50pm during class period 4 May; write in ink in bluebook or on notebook
paper (fronts and backs of pages OK; single-spacing OK); in-class midterms
graded separately from emails.
- email: anytime after class on Tuesday 27 April and before noon Wednesday, 5 May; write in Word or Rich Text Format file; attach and paste into email message to whitec@uhcl.edu (or reply to my email)
Contents (details
further down)
1-hour+ essay
on overall learning experience in Early American Literature w/ references to
research posts
Short essay
on use of online texts, reading experience, how to improve use, etc. + maybe
other aspects of course instruction. This discussion could be added to the first
essay.
1-hour+ essay
on 2-3 texts that challenged, changed, or extended your thinking about
Special requirements:
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Charlotte Temple and Edgar Huntly must be extensively referenced at some point(s) in your final.
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Essays must have titles.
Format / process notes
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Email students: take breaks and write in installments; review & revise
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Attendance not required on 4 May unless you take the exam in-class.
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Don’t copy out long passages from texts. Quote briefly; otherwise simply remind your reader of events, characters, situations in texts. No need for documentation unless it’s something surprising. Refer to texts by full title and full name of author the first time; abbreviations welcome thereafter. E. g., “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” > “Sinners”
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Organize your essay around a central theme or problem. Keep returning to it and developing it as you write and revise.
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Confer with
Audience: a member of our class or a student a future semester of this course, or maybe even your family or other teachers, so they may see what you learned. Your ultimate audience is the instructor, but my response may address whether you demonstrated learning that another reader might comprehend.
Content Details
1-hour+ essay on overall learning experience in Early American Literature w/ references to research posts
Required references:
1-2 Objectives: you may only cover part of an objective, but use its terms and develop its idea(s). If you can connect to other objectives, all the better. Don’t just mention the objective(s), but work with them—reconnect and extend.
Overview of 3-4 course texts, mostly since midterm: you may cover 1-2 texts in more detail than others. Most important: connect texts to each other—compare subjects, themes, characters.
Details / suggestions:
This essay could be an extension of your midterm—welcome to review and make references, redeveloping your ideas and applying them to new materials
Topic choice and development: You may range among texts, periods, course organization or style, but above all have an overall point about your learning experience that you can keep developing, stretching, or altering as you work through materials.
Possible organization:
point A to point B
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Point A: What I came in knowing and why
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Point B: What I read and learned, and how it has extended, challenged, or changed my knowledge
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(possible) Point C: What would I want to read or learn next?
This simple organization can be used overall and in parts of the essay—repeat as helpful!
Short essay on use of online texts, reading experience, how to improve use, etc. + maybe other aspects of course instruction. This discussion could be added to the first essay.
Welcome to comment on the changes explored below, but above all I want information on the part of the course I couldn’t see: your reading experience with the online texts. Comments on annotations welcome.
Changes already in planning:
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reading quizzes to improve student participation, check attendance
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(I could have been stricter all semester, but careful not to punish students for course issues)
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instructor will use online texts to preview readings, offer more model-analysis
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more practice with online texts will simplify--maybe hold course in a room equipped with computers? Or is big screen enough?
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fundamental problem: page #s for locating passages--advice?
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reason for online texts: anthologies keep growing, changing, but semester is same length, so can't do everything
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+ annotations allow for some instruction while reading.
Text-selection issues
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positive responses to multicultural texts
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dominant-culture texts like Puritans or Founders aren't as popular, but essential for American identity + curricular expectations
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Possibly a class on Quaker writers and texts--Friendswood!
Content organization,
esp. historical backgrounds & framework
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course may be increasingly organized under a single unifying theme:
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ongoing transition of American identity and society from traditional to modern
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More emphasis on periods from start: 17c > Enlightenment > Romanticism with more music and visual art to reinforce
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But students don't always respond to history-of-ideas or cultural studies—the history students seemed to like this semester was about people and their migrations or meetings (often with maps, as with Iroquois or Scots-Irish)—Therefore more emphasis & organization on the peoples we're talking about, their identities, movements, strategies.
1-hour+ essay
on 2-3 texts that challenged, changed, or extended your thinking about
To develop thesis,
emphasize what you learn by reading these texts individually and together.
1-2 Objectives: you may only cover part of an objective, but use its terms and develop its idea(s). If you can connect to other objectives, all the better. Don’t just mention the objective(s), but work with them—reconnect and extend.
Possible unifying themes:
Dominant culture or
multicultural studies
Women in literature and
culture
Development of literature
as we know it
The gothic or sublime
Other formal or genre
emphases like poetry, fiction, religious or political texts
Other options: start with
text selection or theme selection, or develop them together
Unity / diversity: who tells the story of
Voices and images of women and ethnicities (obj. 4)
How to tell a single story about a diverse
Material and spiritual aspects of American culture
What's surprising and familiar about early American literature
Final steps:
Review & edit your essay. Make it better.
Emphasize your main points. Connect ideas. Develop examples.
Remember what teachers have told you about your writing.
Examinations are not just chances to show what you already knew or to wish you’d known more beforehand—they test learning.
See grading standards below.
Rest & edit before sending. Surface quality is part of your grade. If you have trouble with spelling, word endings, punctuation, etc., get help from a mentor or tutor as long as they explain changes.
Most common problems in midterms & research plans:
Students didn’t write enough—they wrote what they had to, then stopped, instead of pushing ideas or analyzing examples another step.
Students fear I'll bust them on documentation or double-spacing instead of content, organization, and surface style.
Forgetting or ignoring objectives and course terms
Forgetting or failing to proofread and edit before submission
Grading criteria:
The best exams, even from students who don’t get everything, are essays where I see people learning something and enjoying the possibilities. In contrast, if you’re bored and would rather do something else, I soon feel that way too.
Another key is how much your writing used the class’s language and objectives as opposed to talking about whatever you would have said without taking the course. Above all, don’t talk like celebrities or athletes about dreams and how anyone can do anything if they only believe in themselves. Yawn! . . . that’s nice but can you tell me something you and I didn’t know already?
