Overall performance on the midterm this semester was very poor: 60% of students across both sections failed to achieve a passing grade (70 or above). I'm certain that there are a number of contributing factors: the scheduling of fall break and personal difficulties/illnesses encountered by a number of students. My concern is not the grades that students are earning; it's whether or not students are learning the material. This is not a "weeder" course--it's intended to prepare you for your professional careers as teachers, writers, and intellectuals. So my overall goal is for you all to master the material before the final exam so that you are prepared to move into future courses and into your professional lives.

Students may earn up to 40 additional points (so that failing grades may be brought up to 83.5 and grades students are not satisfied with may be brought up as much as seven points) through a combination of the following elements due:

Students who earned score below 70 must take the following steps:

1) Schedule a meeting with me that will happen prior to November 1.

2) Consult the resources from the Center for Student Success and bring a completed "Time Management Grid" to your meeting with me.

3) Complete and turn in to be graded supplemental exercises (these must be completed by the students themselves outside of their groups) available through the "Midterm Remediation" Module. I am happy to discuss sections of the exercises with you in office hours. These must be completed and submitted to me (on paper) by Nov. 22.

4) Complete a set of 15 questions that cover the material that you missed on the exam. You may complete this task by scheduling a slot with me or with the English office. This must be completed before Dec. 1.

Students who earned a score above 70 but still want to improve their grade may either 1) complete and turn in the supplemental exercises OR complete the 15 questions by Nov. 22.

The points from the exam broke down in this way:

Phonology 36

Morphology and Lexical Grammar 39

Syntax 25

Please examine your test and see where you had the most trouble and complete the appropriate set(s) of exercises. The file names for the exercises refer to the test questions and the linguistic subsystems that they tested.