Study Guide for English Exam
Your English exam will contain questions on all the following items. To prepare for
the English exam, use the resources listed in this file. The selftests are at the bottom of the
explanatory files; the site calls them "quizzes". Some of you may know this material already, especially if you
graduated from high school before 1970, or went to an excellent high school or
have really good English technical skills already. So for each topic, take a selftest first, and then review
the explanatory stuff based on your results.
I strongly suggest you achieve the highest possible grade you can on the English exam before
you attempt to hand in ANY essays for this class.
You may repeat the English exam three times total until the cutoff date.
Ask your instructor about the cut-off date and time, since it will vary from
semester to semester.
I will count your highest grade of the three attempts.
The English exam is the ONLY piece of work for this class for which you get multiple attempts.
If you do not score above 54 on the English exam by the cut-off date, your essays are unlikely to be
technically adequate to pass the class.
For review and selftests, see here.
Also look here for information on
possessives.
For review and selftests, see here.
Errors
in pronoun-antecedent agreement For more information and selftests, see here.
Errors
in subject-verb agreement For more information and selftests, see here.
Run-on
sentences
For more information and selftests, see here.
Sentence
fragments
For more information and selftests, see here.
Danglers (aka "misplaced modifiers")
O'Conner has a whole chapter on danglers. Read it; it's a hoot! See here for another
excellent explanation, and quizzes to test your understanding.
Wordy,
fat, redundant sentences Most students need work on this! See Writing Concisely (explanation
and selftests).
Avoiding passive voice See Active and Passive Voice
(explanation and selftest).
Parallel
construction See Parallelism (explanation and
selftest).
Problems in punctuation of dialog
Many students like to write their papers in dialog form. I like
dialogs, too. They're more fun for both of us. BUT -- please don't attempt a dialog
unless you can punctuate it
correctly! In particular,
note carefully the correct punctuation of direct address (when one
character
addresses another by name or by words such as "man," "dude," or "girl"). There's
an important difference between "I know Jane" and "I know, Jane"; and between
"I know that girl" and "I know that, girl." Because serious ambiguities can
result from this kind of carelessness, you must use commas to separate
the direct address word from the rest of the text, even when there is no apparent
ambiguity. When the direct address word is embedded within a sentence, you
need
two commas, one before and one after: for example, "We all recognize,
Lisa, that you are unusually intelligent."
amount / number (The same explanation applies to "fewer" and "less".)
do / due ("The paper is due Friday. I know you can do it!")
fewer / less (The same explanation applies to "amount" and number".)
know / no ("You're kidding! No way! You don't know this?")
posses (more than one posse, as in "We'll round up a posse, Sheriff")
possess (have)
sole / soul ("Now that I'm dying, my sole concern is the fate of my soul!")
udder / utter (Look this one up if you don't get it: it's too funny!)
waver / waiver
your / you’re
The following words occur commonly in philosophy papers.
Spell these words correctly!
accommodate
For comprehensive review, do the General Self Test on
English Grammar and Spelling.
Click for
comprehensive online writing
help (a really good site)
comprehensive reviews of English grammar,
with explanations and self-tests
Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper
by philosopher Jim Pryor of Princeton University
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