Plan for the Midterm Exam
- Strategic Midterm Exam Preview (below)
- Take Midterm Exam–on Canvas
- The Midterm Exam is live!!!
- You have until Friday (10/07) at 11:00 pm
- You have 150 minutes once you start the exam
- Homework #4 is due next week
Midterm Sections
Section 1–Multiple Choice
What do all sentences need? All sentences need a subject and a predicate, but we often just say they need a subject and verb. Below I have complete sentences and fragments. Which are the fragments, and which are complete?
- Walking on the sidewalk.
- The leaves blew quickly by me.
- Running for office during the 2016 presidential election.
- When the clock strikes twelve.
- The clock strikes twelve.
Section 2: Identify the Main Parts of Speech
Identify subject, verb, direct and indirect objects.
- Jessica bought a shirt for Karen.
- Tyler is now running his father’s store. {What’s being done to what?}
Section 3: Identify Other Parts of Speech
- The exam tests you on the course material.
Determiners
Adjectives
Adverbs
Section 4: Subordinators
- After my dad came home from abroad, he started his own business.
- My dad started his own business after he came home from abroad.
Notice that the above sentences have the same information, yet they are punctuated differently.
Section 5: Conjunctive Adverbs for Compound Sentences
- Kolln & Gray discuss this on p. 58.
Section 6: Revision for Active Voice
- Make sure you get the agent into the subject slot.
- Also, before you start revising, make sure you know what the sentence is trying to communicate.
Section 7: Revision for Concision
- Economize your prose.
Section 8: Punctuation and Subject-Verb Agreement
- Remember where to appropriately place commas, semicolons, colons, and periods.
Section 9: Coordinating Conjunctions for Compound Sentences
- Know how to punctuate compound sentences with coordinating conjunctions.
- FANBOYS…
And, if you’re adventurous, check out Fanboys (2009). This isn’t required, but it’s funny.
Next Class
Next week, we’ll move onto the second half of the semester and focus more on prose revisions than grammatical correctness, but you’ll still be expected to write grammatically correct prose. If the previous weeks’ work was difficult, you may want to schedule a Zoom meeting with me.
Continue with the reading. Homework #4 is due next week via Canvas. I hope to have that up soon. While it’s your last Homework due, it’s NOT your last assignment. That previous sentence was a reminder and punctuation lesson.