Essay Exam – Brainstorming Questions

1.  For our upcoming essay exam, what exactly are you looking for in terms of literary analysis and applications?  

2.  Are you encouragin us to use our own interpretations or are you wanting an exact and particular response?

3.  This relates to question #2 – How are you expecting us to relate international trade with cheese?  Is it however we interpret international trade and cheese? 

4.  Will we be expected to relate the prompt with outside readings?     

Add a comment April 26, 2007

Essay Exams – Read and Learned

While reading the two assigned sections in Chapter 24, “How Exams Written Under Pressure Differ from Other Essays” and “Analyzing Exam Questions,” I found myself feeling quite familiar with the subject matter.  After reading “How Exams Written Under Pressure Differ from Other Essays,”  it became clear that although essay exams can share similar characteristics to other writing assignments, they do have their own different set of characteristics.  While most writing assignments may have a broad range of audiences, the audience for essay exams is the instructor.  For that reason, it is important to know the instructor and what he/she focuses on in an essay so that the response is exactly was the instructor is looking for.  Also, in this section, I learned that there really is a reason English teachers and courses require a certain number of books and other literature pieces to be read.  Although I figured this out back in my high school AP English classes, it helped me to stop and realize that when the instructor suggests particular pieces for students to read, it is only to benefit the student, not just give them more work to do.  Being familiar with authors, writers, books, poems, and other pieces provides great support for the exam response and enables the student to relate and apply ideas and topics, such as taking a poem and relating its ideas to nature and society.  This section also provided a few strategies which will aid in essay exam writing.   In, “Analyzing Exam Questions,” the idea that essay exams focus on interpretation was stressed.  This section provides the student with some reassurance in the way that it explained how, although many essay exam prompts start out with a quote and/or writer that the student may not be familiar with, that does not mean the student will not be able to form a response to the prompt.  The strategy that was given in this section is that even if the prompt contains unfamilar works, by deconstructing the prompt and looking for cue words and phrases, the student will see that the prompt will give a hint as to what a certain writer or piece was about as well as provide questions that are answerable and points out that the key is to relate or use the works as a means for support of the student’s response.  Also, the importance of knowing what certain essay-question verbs mean so that the prompt will be easier to understand.       

Add a comment April 26, 2007

Why I Hate, or Perhaps Like, Essay Exams

I do not think essay exams are of my greatest desire to do.  I love to write, but I feel that when I am pressured to write a certain paper in a given amount of time, I am not able to express my true feelings and everything I would have liked to put in the paper.  At times, I feel rushed and unorganized, which is not a great thing concidering it is an exam and organization is a key element in the grading process of the paper.  I find it hard to go into great detail which means I am only able to swim in the shallow end instead of swimming far out into the water, exploring each and every thought, opinion, and statement.  However, sometimes being rushed to write an exam paper enables me to write everything that is flowing out of my head at that moment, evne if it may not be quite so organized, I can get everything I want written in my paper.  Having a short period of time to write an essay keeps me from delaying my writing and not writing a paper that expressed all of my thoughts.  Perhaps this is why English teachers always give timed-writings. 

1 comment April 24, 2007

Argument and Counterargument

            The need to ban childhood corporal punishment is supported by studies proving that physical punishment during childhood may lead to behavioural and psychological problems in adulthood.  In more cases than not, linear trend analyses showed statistically significant associations between increasing frequency of reported slapping or spanking and increasing rates of lifetime psychiatric disorder (MacMillan 1999).  According to this study, continuous spanking of a child will indeed have a negative outcome on a child’s future behaviors.  However, even with the knowledge that physical punishment can potentially have a negative effect on a child, American parents still support the usage of spanking.

            Most Americans have a very strong support for the spanking of children, and there is proof of this.  For instance, when Sally J. Lieber, a member of the California state assembly, recently made an attempt to move one step closer towards banning corporal punishment.  Lieber had proposed a legislative bill that would declare California the first state to make the use of corporal punishment of children under age 3 a misdemeanor (Alvy 2007).  However, on February 23, 2007, the bill was abandoned because the author of the bill “conceded that it had little chance of passing” (McKinley 2007).  Sadly, the majority of their reasons for supporting corporal punishment during childhood are myths.  (Straus 1994).  According to Straus, one such myth states that if you do not spank your children, they will be spoiled and disobedient.  Although this may be true, part of the reason children become disobedient when they are not spanked may be because the parent did not discuss the child’s misbehavior or they used harsh verbal remarks to criticize the child’s wrongdoings (Straus 1994).  Therefore, spanking is not necessary to prevent a child from running wild and being mischievous.  A long, nice conversation with a child to explain what the child did wrong and why the child is in trouble for they did, rather than reverting to the belt-to-butt punishment, can make all the difference in a child’s future behavior.           

1 comment April 10, 2007

Argument, Audience, and Fallacies

I used Word to type this blog, but since it would not paste on my post the way I had intended it to, I included a link to the document of my blog.   

argument-audience-and-fallacies-blog.doc

Add a comment April 3, 2007