So you work with a class for an entire semester introducing methods of literary analysis and the vocabulary appropriate to those methods, but then when you read the final essays, you see too many broad generalizations and too much vague language instead of the sophisticated concepts you've been mastering in class.
How can we encourage students to employ appropriate vocabulary in their essays?
I can't hold a gun to my students' heads to make them use certain literary terms, but I can hold a grade to their heads. I've done it before and I'll do it again, this time on the final exam in my Concepts of Nature class. It's a sophomore-level class that fulfills two general education requirements, so I have a handful of English majors and a whole mess of students just trying to check off boxes on the degree audit.
On the final exam, they will have to respond to two essay questions worth 30 points each, and the remaining 40 points will come from their correctly employing a list of terms I will provide. If they use the terms in a way that demonstrates awareness of meaning, they get full credit; for each term they ignore or use incorrectly, they will lose points--and if they ignore all of them, the best grade they can earn on the exam is a D-.
I've tried this method before in several classes and I find that students go out of their way to make sure I notice how they're using the critical vocabulary: they underline or highlight the terms and sometimes they go overboard in explaining the concepts, but at least they're using appropriate language! And I am rewarded with an opportunity to read substantive essays employing sophisticated terms. What's not to love?
2 comments:
I like this idea - I'm envisioning an exam with two questions and a list of terms that have to be incorporated into the essays? Or is there a separate essay question to show off their term use?
I'd love to use this idea on a final exam (or maybe even a final paper...). Brilliant idea!
Two questions, and the terms have to be incorporated into the essays. I've used this method very effectively in film classes: show a film clip and ask students to analyze some aspect of that clip using the terms provided. It leads to much more specificity in the analysis and it makes students demonstrate that they know how to use a word rather than just spitting out a definition.
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