The grades for Test #3 are now posted on WebCT. I’m a bit concerned that the class average for this text is down significantly from earlier tests… I’m considering various ways of addressing this, both in terms of offering some opportunity to improve your grade and as this relates to future tests. If you have any thoughts on this, please post them here, or email me privately. And, of course, stop by my office if you want to have a look at your test.
April 4, 2008 at 11:21 am
I had a B in this class until this test. I didn’t even get a 50 %. I think that there were a couple of reasons for this. First, I was ill while trying to study for this test. I had pink eye terribly bad and wasn’t able to study as much as I would have liked. Still, I could have studied further in advance, so I know that it is my fault for that. Secondly, I thought that it was much harder to remember who wrote what. When reading novels, it is much easier to remember would quotes go with what book or author. For instance, nothing is writting like Twain’s Huck Finn, so it was easy to seperate that from other texts that we read. Most of the books had a certain voice or style of writing that was easy to differentiate. With the poetry, it is much harder to keep who wrote what straight. Still, I blame myself mostly for the grade. Anything that you can do to help would be great.
April 4, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I agree with Kellen. I had three tests this week within a period of two days, all of which were very difficult, and my time management just did not equal out the way it should. I most certainly am not blaming any of my professors for scheduling tests the way they did, however because we read all of the poems so long ago, I had a hard time differentiating which poem quote went with which poet. I unfortunately did not have time to re-read every poem, so I had only studied my notes and not as thoroughly as I would have liked. I too had a decent grade in the class before this test. If there is any way to earn extra-credit or do a re-take, I think that would help immensely. In one of my classes, we are allowed to re-take any of the tests if we want during finals week, so maybe we could approach it that way. As Kellen stated, any way of helping would be most appreciated.
April 6, 2008 at 3:41 pm
This test was actually just really difficult. Matching the authors to the work was a bit tough. To prepare for this part I took a notebook and wrote down facts about each author, then broke down all of their works and included significan lines and themes. Though I felt the most prepared for this test, I performed the worst. I was relieved to hear that I wasn’t the only person who did poorly. A curve or a bonus point quiz in class would be incredibly helpful.
April 6, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Agreed. It was just a tough test. I didn’t feel like the authors (with a few exceptions) had super-distinguishing features in terms of tone or voice, so it was tough to identify. If the selections would have been a sentence longer, or had the title attached, I would have done much better. For the most part, none of the poems had a lot of “plot” in them so it’s not like if you knew what happened in the poem,you could figure it out. I would love to have a bonus point quiz or extra credit.
April 7, 2008 at 11:07 am
This test was the hardest one that we have taken yet this semester i think. I probably could have studied more but i thought that the quotes were really hard even though i had read all the poems. It was really hard to distinguish between which poem was which and the authors, when i read the quotes i knew i had read it and remembered reading it but it was really hard to place which poem it was from or which author it was from. I thought that most of the poems were pretty similar when reading them for class, and that there wasnt really any way to tell them apart on the test. Any way to get extra credit for class after this test would be greatly appreciated.
April 7, 2008 at 6:16 pm
yes! any extra credit or anything of that nature that could help us pull our grades up would be greatly appreciated. thanks!
April 7, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I also agree that this was a very difficult test. I read all of the readings, attended all of the class, and study quite a bit, but I still didn’t do very well on this exam. Everything just got jumbled up when I was trying to answer the questions. I could remember reading the lines of the poems, but I couldn’t put my finger on who the author was because for me when seeing the lines altogether they melted into one poem. I think part of this had to do with the fact that we had to cruise through so many poems in such a short amount of time and it was almost impossible to remember what every poem was. Also, I was expecting more questions about Quicksand, but maybe that’s because we didn’t get to discuss it as much. Anyways, that’s just how the exam went for me. I feel that any extra credit would be glorious!
April 7, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I most definately agree with everybody above!! I studied as much (if not more, because I figured a poetry test would be harder) as I did for the previous two tests and did not do nearly as well, even though I felt prepared. I think the biggest thing for me was not really being able to identify an author’s distinct style within the small portions of text as easily as in a larger story. It was also a lot harder to try to put the quotes/lines into context during the test because, for some of the shorter poems at least, it was hard enough to put them into context with the entire poem presented in the book. Any “grade improving opportunities” would be MORE than greatly appreciated!!!!
April 8, 2008 at 1:31 am
I agree with the pack, the test was hard. There were altogether too many authors/poems in too short of a time span to have every line memorized. This raises the biggest concerns for me when I think about the final exam. Is the final exam comprehensive and will we be expected to know all the authors/ poems/ shorts stories/ novels for the whole semester? It would be really helpful to get a handout for the final for those of us that would like to start preparing early.
April 8, 2008 at 9:43 am
I also agree. The identification questions were VERY difficult. Although I studied a lot for this test, when it came to the identification questions I was lost. Because many of us did poorly on this test, would it be possible to curve? If not, extra credit would be much appreciated.
April 8, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I thought that the test was hard, but really only the identification part. I thought the other questions were comparable to our previous tests, but when I had to identify not only the poem, but the author, my mind went blank and I switched a lot of my answers around. I am wondering for the make-up that you discussed in class, if it was going to be similar to this, or if you would somehow tweak the id portion. Even if the title of the poem was the option instead of the author would be helpful.
April 8, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Although I did better on this test than I thought, I did think it was somewhat of a difficult test to take. The identification part was definitely the hardest for me, even though I made sure to remember which authors wrote which poems, since matching those together has been one of the more important topics in previous tests. I was happy to hear that we can make up an exam; I think this will really help our overall grades.
April 8, 2008 at 8:42 pm
I agree that test was really tough. The identification questions were really hard even though the poems were short. The other parts of the test were not as hard. Im glad that we get a chance to re take a test so hopefully in doing so, my score will be much better.
April 8, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I am not sure if this test was more difficult or not since I got pretty much the same grade on all of the tests I have taken. I will say the ids were difficult, I am not sure why because really the poems are very different. The easiest for me to identify was Hughes because I am very familiar with his poetry but I always, ALWAYS confuse Pound and Elliot.