Tutorama: Week Fourteen: Preparing for Your Final Exam

The purpose of the final exam
In the final exam, you must demonstrate your ability to write an essay that meets the minimum requirements for passing 100 or 100R. You must pass the final exam in order to pass the course and move on to Expository Writing.

The structure of the exam
The final exam is structured like the midterm exam (see Preparing for Your Midterm Exam). The exam takes place during the last two class periods of the semester. On the first day, you will receive the assignment question and write a rough draft. On the second day, you will re-write your essay as a final draft.

Before the exam:

• Review your midterm exam, instructor's comments, and classroom notes. What areas did your instructor ask you to work on? Review the strategies you have developed to improve in these areas.

• Review the essays you will be asked to write on for the final exam. Make additional notes in relation to the new essay assigned for the exam.

• Make a list of connections between the essays. Try to develop several different projects based on those connections. While the essay question may not correspond exactly to your projects, imagining them helps you to become more familiar with the texts.

• Review any grammar errors you tend to make. Practice correcting the errors using the final drafts you wrote for class and your grammar book.

Day 1:

• Read the assignment carefully. Pay particular attention to the key terms used by your instructor.

• Before you begin to write, make notes on the inside cover of your bluebook. Try to develop a working thesis or focus for your argument and a possible organization.

• Write as much as you can. Be sure to include the full text of quotes from your essay.

Between Exam Days:

• Review the essays again.

• Plan out your revision. You will not be able to bring your notes into the exam, but planning ahead of time will keep you focused.

Day 2:

• Rewrite the essay in a new blue book.

• Be sure to sustain your project throughout the essay by making sure that each paragraph explains how or why a connection between the essays works.

• Leave yourself 15 minutes at the end of the period to proofread your exam and to correct any grammar mistakes you tend to make.

What your instructor is looking for

The Writing Program requires students to meet the following criteria (see the Gradatorium: Official Grading Criteria for more details). Students must:

• Construct a position and project that responds to the assignment question, and sustain the project’s focus through the exam

• Choose and thoroughly analyze relevant quotations from the text in a way that demonstrates good reading comprehension

• Make connections between the texts that go beyond similarity or comparison/contrast

• Organize ideas into clear and fully developed paragraphs

• Control sentence-level error

• Demonstrate the ability to revise from one draft to the next

Your instructor will be asking you do the same things you would in a take-home essay, but on a smaller scale. Instead of making 4 or 5 points of argument, you should focus on 2 to 3 main ideas.

Conclusion
If you have been working hard throughout the semester, the final exam should come as no surprise to you. By the end of the semester, you should have a good idea of what you can do. It’s just a matter of doing it as best you can. While you must pass the final exam to pass the course, remember, you’ve already practiced all the skills required to pass. Most students who have written passing papers by the end of the course, who have worked hard, and who use the strategies they've learned, pass their final exam. Think of the final exam as a chance to show how much you have accomplished this semester. Good luck!

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