First Year Writing Exams

ENG1101 Final Exam

The final exam for 1101 is a required, one-day uniform departmental exam given on the day of the last class session.  The exam is based on a short reading, usually from The New York Times.  For the exam, students are asked to write an in-class essay analyzing and responding to the article’s argument and ideas.  Faculty should distribute the reading to students the class PRIOR to the exam to ensure that students have sufficient time to read and understand the article.  However, the exam questions should not be distributed until the day of the exam.  Faculty are responsible for preparing students for the exam, and some faculty choose to designate the class session prior to the exam as a reading day, asking students to read and summarize the article in class. Although the exam is written by members of the department,  it is graded by the professor, and it is weighted variously from 10-20% of a student’s final grade. The exams can be picked up in the department chair’s office and must be signed for in N512. They are to be marked and returned to the department when final grades are submitted.

Many FYW writing faculty administer a Midterm Exam in their courses, even though this is a not a requirement for the course.  Faculty generally choose to give a midterm exam for several different reasons: 1/ to give students an opportunity to engage with the structural, generic, and process conventions of exam writing prior to the final exam; 2/ to collect samples of formal, in-class writing from students; 3/ to align writing course assessment with the course assessment tools students may encounter in other courses at the college.

Sample City Tech ENG1101 Final Exam        Sample Final Exam Fall 2014 Privacy

Sample Final Exam Spring 2015 Hello Stranger   Sample Final Exam College Value

Final Exam Essay Performance Rubric

Professor Garcia’s Guidelines for Grading the ENG1101 Final Exam

ENG1121 Final Exam 

The ENG1121 final exam is a required in-class essay exam that takes place on the day of the last class session.  Instructors have the choice of using a departmental exam, which asks students to consider one of several themes and reflect on how this theme relates to several of the readings that they have done for the course, or of creating their own final exam for the course.  If instructors choose to create their own exam, a copy of the exam must be submitted to the Director of Composition for review three weeks prior to the date the exam will be given.  Instructors interested in writing their own final exam for the course are encouraged to read the Suggestions for Writing ENG1121 Final Exam Questions.  A copy of the exam also needs to be submitted to the English Department along with the graded student exams, which are kept on file. The exam is weighted variously from 10-20% of a student’s final grade. The exams can be picked up in the department chair’s office and must be signed for in N512. They are to be marked and returned to the department when final grades are submitted.  Many FYW writing faculty administer a Midterm Exam in their courses, even though this is a not a requirement for the course.  Faculty generally choose to give a midterm exam for several different reasons: 1/ to give students an opportunity to engage with the structural, generic, and process conventions of exam writing prior to the final exam; 2/ to collect samples of formal, in-class writing from students; 3/ to align writing course assessment with the course assessment tools students may encounter in other courses at the college.

Sample City Tech Departmental ENG1121 Final Exam

Professor Goodison’s Sample ENG1121 Final Exam Questions

Professor Kwong’s Sample ENG1121 Final Exam

Spring 2015

Spring 2014

Spring 2013