The ENG 111 final exam requires that each student write an essay during the one-hour-and-fifty-minute final exam period. The exam is the same for all ENG 111 classes and is developed by a committee of the faculty of the English department working confidentially together. Most faculty in the department are not involved in the development of the exam and do not know in advance what readings will be assigned.

A few weeks before the end of the semester, you will be given one lengthy reading, usually a full article from the New York Times Magazine or an excerpt from a similarly serious text. You are expected to read and study this article independently and we will also review and discuss it in class and have reading and writing exercises to practice. On the day of the exam, you will be given a second reading on a related topic and you will be asked to write an essay that discusses the two readings in relation to one another. Your written essay must use quotations from both articles. Your essay is expected to summarize key material from each reading, to use quotations from the texts, and to credit your source material accurately in MLA format.

As soon as it is made available, the “long” reading for this semester will be posted here. If you want to get a sense of the reading in advance, see this 2015 article from The Atlantic, “The Coddling of the American Mind”  by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, recently selected as the final exam reading.

Each ENG 111 final exam is evaluated by at least two members of the English department faculty; with the advice of her colleagues, each instructor is then responsible for determining the actual exam grade of her own students. The department requires that the exam count between 20% and 35% toward your final grade for the class.