Final Exam Review
English IIIA
Miller
The final exam encompasses fifteen percent of the total semester grade. The final exam is worth
100 points. Students must remember to use best practices for writing about literature.
The following works will be explored on the final exam: Bowden’s Black Hawk Down,
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Williams’ The Glass
Menagerie, Hurston’s “How it Feels to be Colored Me,” and William Faulkner’s “Nobel Prize
Acceptance Speech.” The exam instructions do not allow students to focus on just one or two of
the works. Students need to be familiar with these works in order to be successful.
The objective portion of the final covers Black Hawk Down (ten points) and includes five
true/false questions and five multiple choice questions (one point each). The objective portion
should take students no more than five minutes to complete.
Three short-answer questions (thirty points) will explore William Faulkner’s “Nobel Prize
Acceptance Speech” and three of the following works: Black Hawk Down, The Grapes of
Wrath, The Great Gatsby, “The Glass Menagerie or “How it Feels to be Colored Me.” Through
selected works, students will be asked to explore Faulkner’s notion of creating something out of
the human spirit which did not exist before (five points, three-to-five sentences, three-to-five
minutes), consider Faulkner’s concept of the old universal truths being presented in literature
(ten points, four-to-six sentences, four-to-six minutes), and investigate Faulkner’s suggestion that
it is a writer’s privilege to lift up a man’s heart as well as the concept that poets do not only
record humanity but prop it up (fifteen points, five-to-ten sentences, five-to-ten minutes).
Three more short-answer questions (thirty points) will ask students to discuss the
contemporary relevance of three of the following works: Black Hawk Down, The Grapes of
Wrath, The Great Gatsby, “The Glass Menagerie or “How it Feels to be Colored Me.” The
discussions will require approximately four-to-six sentences each, will be worth ten-points each,
and should take the student four-to-six minutes each.
Four questions (fifteen points total—varying points possible for individual questions) explore
research. Given source information and a passage, students must create a works cited page and
entry, paraphrase information, summarize information, and create a research note. (This section
should take five-to-ten minutes to complete).
One paragraph response (fifteen points) will explore the concepts of discussing fiction and nonfiction literary works. With Black Hawk Down as a base, students will need to consider whether
or not a non-fiction work may be discussed within the realm of literary devices and
characterization or if some other discussion method offers the most appropriate handling. (This
section should take ten-to-fifteen minutes to complete).