Advanced Composition, Fall 2013, O'Donnell


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Student Essays / Final Exam Instructions
last update: December 29, 2013

 

I. Final Exam Instructions (Final exam period: Weds, December 11, 6-8pm.)

Final Exam, Part A. (out of class): Response to classmates' best work. 

1.  Instructions

  a. Before the final exam period, choose three of your classmates' essays that are posted here.

  b. Write a response to each of those three essays. (See "2. Guidelines for Each Response," below.)

  c. Bring two copies of each of those three responses--one copy for the author, and one copy for me--to the final exam period. Please label each copy, by hand-writing, at the top, either "copy 1: for the author," or "copy 2: for the instructor."

 

2.  Guidelines for Each Response

  a. Write at least 300 words.
  b. Address the author of the essay directly, using the second-person, personal pronoun. Do not evaluate the essay. Instead, write about your own experience as a reader. Why did you choose to respond to that particular essay? What did the essay make you think and feel?

  c. Include your ETSU email address on your response.

 

Final Exam, Part B. (in class): Impromptu reflections on what you learned this semester.

1.  Instructions

During the final exam period you will also write a short, in-class essay about your own writing skills, and about what you learned this semester in class. Please bring your notebook to class. You will refer to entries in that notebook, in order to write your in-class essay.

 

II.  Grading for Final Exam

Parts A and B of the final exam will both be graded, separately, according to the usual criteria for good writing:  1) focus; 2) support and development; 3) organization, including paragraphing; 4) style/ voice/ readability; 5) editing and proofreading. 

The two grades will then be averaged to get a single grade, which is worth 10% of your final grade. 

 

III. Best Student Writing from This Semester!!!!

1 - The Chosen Ones: How Three People Changed My Life, by Amanda Wright

2 - Disney Bases The Little Mermaid on a Short Story: But Why Do They Leave Out the Most Important Concepts?, by Katie Olson

3 - From Mark Twain to J.K. Rowling: The Importance of Reading Banned Books, by Keri-Ann Jenkins

4 - Give us a Gender Neutral Pronoun, Yo!: The Need for and Creation of a Gender Neutral, Singular, Third Person, Personal Pronoun, by Elizabeth Elrod

5 - A Heart Disease that can be a problem:  Bicuspid Aortic Valve disease is a common but often undiagnosed heart disease that can cause major problems. What is it? What or who causes it? And how is it treated?  by Ryan Collier

 

6 - [ One really excellent essay, no longer available at this site, upon author's request. -- KOD 12/29/13 ], by Claire Jones

7 - Kyary Pamyu Pamyu: More than a “Japanese Lady Gaga”--A Profile of Harajuku’s Official “Kawaii Ambassador”, by Allie Lewis

8 - Maybe I Never should’ve Been So Curious about Finding My Birthmother, by Kimberly James

9 - Point 19: The Point of No Return--A story of how LSD rewrote my teenage years, by D. Ganja (pseudonymn)

10 - Super Glue to Cure What Ails Ya: My First Experience at a House Concert; Knoxville, TN, 2007, by J. E. Duncan (pseudonymn)

 

11 - Walking the Catacombs: Exploring Edinburgh's Underbelly--How One Skeptic Came to Believe in Ghosts, by Brooke Bowers