Review of a Presentation

(Turned it in but...totally forgot this was a blog assignment! Better late than never.)

Essay Exam Presentation

            I choose the essay exams presentation. I choose this because I always struggle with getting out the important info when crunched on time. The ACT exam essays I wrote were extremely poorly written.  I have never taken a college level essay exam and I hoped to learn good strategies in taking essay exams like in the ACT. The presentation was held in language classroom and there were about 15 students in the room, no faculty.  The presenter was a professor at the Normandale. He used the projector and worked with the class to come up with the tips to use when taking essay exams. It was more of a conversation then him just lecturing.

He told us a story of when he was in college. He had an exam on biblical history and wasn’t prepared for it at all. He had read some essay on the way to class and wrote about it. No matter what the question was about, his answer came from that essay. Moral of his story was, don’t BS the essay. Know the material and be prepared.

He also told us to understand the question. We went over what the words compare, discuss, evaluate, summarize and contrast meant. Although questions will often times not specifically have the words, it is vital to find key verbs and terms, and cross out irrelevant information in order to figure out the basics of the question. We then went through four example questions and figured out what the question was basically asking.

The main thing I learned from this presentation was to use key terms and main ideas from the question to form the thesis of your answer. Although I think I do this, it was the best advice of the presentation. It makes sense because the audience just wants to be informed of what you know. You don’t need an AGD or anything. You just need to get to the facts.

Overall this presentation was sort of pointless for me. I didn’t really learn any new information about taking an essay exam. Obviously you need to know the material. Obviously you should understand the question. Actually breaking down parts of a question seemed a little pointless also because when you take an exam you aren’t going to spend five minutes breaking down the question. That should be second nature by the time you’re in college. A woman asked the question, “What is the most important thing when taking an exam?” at the end of the presentation. He replied, “Relax.” This is good advice but again, pretty well known information.