English 30-1
Midterm Review
The midterm exam for English 30-1 will be in two sections:
Part 1 – Reading – 40 marks
Multiple choice questions based on four reading selections: Non-fiction
article, a short fiction reading, and a modern drama.
Part 2 – Writing – 40 marks
A Personal Response Essay – Similar to your first essay that you wrote
for me, but this time you will be given a poem, a short reading, and a
picture to respond to. You can choose to respond with a personal
response essay or a creative (prose) writing piece.
These two exams must be written before Wednesday, October 29, or you
will receive a mark of zero for this part of your course.
This week, you can use this time to prepare for your midterm exam. You
can practice reading exams online, as well as examine more thoroughly,
the Personal Response portion of the English 30-1 Diploma Exam.
Part 1 – Reading
For the purposes of this midterm exam, you will be responding to just over
½ of a former diploma exam. (On Monday, January 20, your Reading
portion of the Diploma Exam is 70 questions, based on 7-9 reading
selections, and will also include a Shakespearian Drama and poetry. You
only have 2 ½ hours to do this test.)
This is often the part of the diploma exam that students struggle the most
with, because of several reasons. One is the sheer volume of the reading
you need to do for this exam. The other reason is what you are asked to
do: “Choose the best answer.”
For this reason, you have to take the following information into
consideration whenever you are faced with a Reading Exam:
Understand the Test
Many students struggle with Multiple Choice Reading Comprehension
Tests because they do not understand the concept of the test and the best
strategies for writing the test.
Time and structure
• Each Diploma exam consists of selections of fiction, nonfiction,
poetry or song, visual texts, Shakespearean drama, and
modern drama (including television or radio scripts or
screenplays)
• Each Diploma exam consists of around 70 multiple choice
questions.
• Each question is worth 1 mark = all questions are of equal
value
• The test is timed (2 ½ plus ½ hours)
• When you calculate time in for reading, each question should
take no more than 1 minute to answer
Organize the Test
• The test is already organized in a way which the test creators believe
to be most beneficial for students. However, they cannot predict your
personal abilities. Take the time before you start reading to make
sure the organization best fits your needs.
• Look at the length and type of readings, and the number of questions
asked.
• Consider what you might find engaging and what you will struggle
with.
• Make sure that you are reading the most challenging portions of the
test at your peak thinking time.
Specific Readings (these will be on your midterm exam)
Visuals
• questions of visual literary (location of objects, colour, clarity,
and context) are most common
• often connected to other readings
Modern Drama
•
pay particular attention to any information that proceeds the play
•
pay particular attention to stage directions
•
variety of questions asked; frequently rated easy to read, but
difficult questions
Fiction excerpts
•
pay particular attention to any information that proceeds the
excerpt
•
variety of questions asked; often including many specific line
questions
• easy to read, but long
Non-fiction
•
recently these have been connected to other selections
particularly poems and visuals; often very useful for other
questions
•
specific lines, vocabulary and theme questions are most
common
•
medium level of difficulty
How Do I Prepare for a Reading Exam?
 Review Literary Terminology (Let me know if you need a list.)
 Start reading more! (Students who spend their spare time reading
are exposed to a higher vocabulary and skill level, and tend to do
better on these exams than students who are not regular readers.
PICK UP A BOOK!)
 Practice Reading Exams. We will do this on every unit exam.
However, on your own time, you can access this website:
www.exambank.com
Login: hf.glenmary
Password: exam
For midterm review this week, use www.exambank.com and practice
selections of English 30-1. You can also use 20-1, and 30-2 if you
wish to throughout this course.
Part 2 – Writing a Personal Response to Literature
Back in the second week of this course, you wrote a personal
response essay to the poem “Dwelling Place” by P.K. Page and
answered this question:
What does this poem suggest about the ways in which individuals respond to
the conflict between illusion and reality?
For the purposes of the midterm exam and the diploma exam, your personal
response essay will have a similar type question that will ask you to develop a
controlling idea about a topic, but also to relate the topic to a poem, a short
reading, or to a picture. You may respond with an analytical / personal response
essay like we did in September or you can consider a creative (prose) response
The majority of students write a personal / analytical response type essay
where they look at one resource (most of the time it is the picture) and
respond to it. This is why I stress that you know that approach very well,
and you use it!! Honestly, unless you consider yourself a creative writer,
respond with an essay!
If you consider yourself to be a creative writer, there are a number of different
approaches you can consider. The problem with this approach is that students
get so wrapped up writing the story, describing characters and settings, that they
lose track of the purpose of the assignment. If you write a creative response,
you have to make sure that your exam question is addressed completely within
your response. Another problem with the creative response is that of time limits.
This section of the diploma exam was designed for students to finish in 45-60 min.
If you take too much time writing a beautiful short story that is only worth 15% of
your diploma exam, you will be sacrificing the time you have for the bigger (35%)
Critical Response Essay. Still another issue is that of the original idea. Most
students write a creative response about the picture, which results in a lot of
repeated story lines as exam markers slug through 17,000 papers. (Been there –
done that!)
That being said, if you are a creative person, and this idea of writing a creative
writing piece is a spine-tingling motivating factor, here are some responses you
can consider:
Creative Responses You Can Consider:





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journal / blog responses
a letter / letters
short story
a continuation of the story– one year later
Internal monologue (these are awesome!)
Do NOT write a poem – only prose responses!!
Just remember to address the topic of the exam completely in your response,
no matter what format you choose to write!
Preparing for your Midterm Exam – (Personal Response to Literature)
Refer to our old friend, the Alberta Education Student Exemplar website:
http://education.alberta.ca/admin/testing/diplomaexams/examples.aspx
Read through the English 30-1 January 2012 Diploma Exam, particularly pages 4-9,
which gives the sources and the exam question (What do these texts suggest
about the impact of an individual’s ambition on self and others? ) as well as pages
13-60, which give you student examples of S, PF, and E papers that are both essay
and creative responses.
(Yes, I realize this is a lot of tedious reading. Unfortunately, this is one of the
drawbacks to independent study, so we have no choice.)
Your midterm exam will have a similar topic, and similar text sources. How will
you respond to this Personal Response Exam?
Good luck!!