← Back to the English Composition outline The Course Maker
← English Composition outline
Week 8 · Midterm exam

Midterm Exam — Instructions

English Composition Free sample edition
The midterm exam's instructions page, as students read it before they start. The exam's questions and its answer key ship only inside the course's .imscc (Classic QTI); a scored exam's items are not published on this public page.

Overview

This is the scored midterm for English Composition. It checks the first half of the course, Weeks 1 to 7, and the questions those weeks asked. Who am I writing to, and why do good writers revise? Can I restate a text fairly before I judge it? What is my point, in one paragraph and in a whole essay? How do I show a moment, how does a real text persuade, and what links my evidence to my claim?

The midterm has 25 questions, and every question counts the same. Most questions ask you to select exactly one option (22 questions). Three ask you to judge a true/false statement. Any passage a question needs is printed in the question itself.

Every question practices a skill you have already used in the weekly quizzes, tutorials, and Writing Studios. Nothing on the midterm comes from outside Weeks 1 to 7.

Coverage and scope

The midterm covers Weeks 1 to 7 and the course's first four objectives. Here is how the 25 questions divide among them:

  • The rhetorical situation and the writing process (4 questions). Taught in Week 1 and used again in Week 2. Expect the five questions (writer, audience, purpose, genre, context), what it means for the writing process to be recursive, and revision vs. editing.
  • Critical reading (6 questions). Taught in Week 2 and used again in Week 3. Expect separating a text's claim from what it is about, the reasons offered for it, and any point it grants, and the tests a fair summary passes. Expect the move of representing a view fairly before replying to it, and, from Week 3, a topic sentence as a claim that the rest of the paragraph supports.
  • The paragraph, the thesis, and essay structure (6 questions). Taught in Weeks 3 and 4 and used again in Week 7. Expect the two-part test (arguable and specific), the stages of narrowing a topic, and the essay map, including where it puts the objections. Expect the placement convention, and the thesis read as the claim of an argument.
  • The modes, rhetorical analysis, and argument (9 questions). Taught in Weeks 5 to 7. Expect showing vs. telling and how a story spends its detail, and the order an explanation of a task follows. Expect the rhetorical devices and the difference between a label and an analysis. Expect the Toulmin parts the course keys, especially what separates the grounds from the warrant.

The modes, rhetorical analysis, and argument carry the most questions, so give Weeks 5 to 7 the most review time. Critical reading and the paragraph-and-thesis objective come next, with 6 questions each. Week 8's three-sentence habit is not scored on its own, but it rests on the Week 2 and Week 6 distinctions the midterm does check.

These notes map the skills the midterm checks. The questions themselves are drawn from the course's question bank and are not listed here.

Instructions

  • Attempts: one. The midterm is a single scored attempt.
  • Time limit: there is no time limit. Take the time you need, as long as you submit before the exam closes.
  • Window: the midterm opens in the Week 8 module and closes at the due time your instructor sets. Start early enough to finish comfortably inside that window.
  • Navigation: the questions appear one at a time, and once you move on you cannot go back to an earlier question. Settle each one before you click to the next.
  • Materials: every passage and sentence a question asks about is printed in the question, so you will not need to look anything up. Unless your instructor announces otherwise, the midterm is closed-note.
  • After you submit: Canvas shows your score. The keyed responses stay hidden so the midterm stays fair for every student.

Academic integrity

The midterm is an individual, scored assessment, and it is closed to AI. Do not use a chatbot or any other AI tool, do not get help from another person, and do not share or post the questions during or after your attempt. These rules come from the course syllabus, which explains why. The midterm confirms that you personally can read a text critically, build a paragraph and a thesis, and name an appeal or a move in an argument.

The honest way to prepare is open to you. The study guide, the practice exam, and the exam-prep tutorial rehearse the same skills with fresh variants, and nothing on them appears on the midterm word for word.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com