Analyze your weaknesses on the Exams

The exams are in five parts with different kinds of questions. The following constitutes advice on studying once you see where your exams may be weakest:

If you had trouble with matching:

You will not memorize all the speeches to be able to identify the speech from memory. The key to doing well on this portion is to identify the cues that tell you who the speaker is. That might be subject matter, style, iconic phrase, or issue/time period. I do not try to make these hard. There is an obvious cue in the text to who delivered the speech.

I recommend that you construct a table.  On the first column list all the speeches you have studied. Across the top create columns for the speaker, when the speech was given, the occasion for the speech, the issue addressed, what the speaker needed to accomplish, the subject matter of the speech, the rhetorical characteristics that stand out in the speech, memorable phrases, and what the speech teaches us about leadership.  Just doing such a table is an excellent review.

If you had trouble with multiple choice:

There are several kinds of multiple choice questions. They test your knowledge of leadership and how it demands certain things of rhetors, the rhetorical history of the century and the moment we are studying, important things about the speeches we study, and your understanding of important concpets we develop as the course proceeds.

Here are some suggestions if you did not do well on this part:

• Make it a habit every day to decide what the most important five or six things we learned are. You cannot know all of the material in the course, but this will help you figure out what you will be asked about.
• Consult the glossary. Review the terminology that we have used in the course.
• Concentrate on introductions to the various units and to the speeches (in your book).
• Review your introductory notes from each unit. Also review the introductory material from the course.
• Read through your abstracts to identify historical demands, paying particular attention to your theses in which you indicate what you thought was most important in the speech. Compare this to what emerged in our discussion.

If you had trouble with the fill-in-the-blanks:

This section will test your control over options that speakers might face or in decisions they might make, and also the variety of speaking we encounter at various times of the century. By its nature the test strategy tries to get you to produce lists. So, it will test you where lists are present.

• As you go through your notes, note lists of things that might make good questions.
• They should be important lists. So, look for times when lists get used to understand the speakers and speeches that we study.
• Look for options or stages in your notes and the question can work.
• Be sure you can state the list you have found succinctly; with titles or labels.

If you trouble with short answer questions:

These questions either ask you to go into some depth on an important concept or to relate concepts, speakers or times to each other. They lend themselves to comparison and contrast questions.

• Because of the heavy number of points devoted to them, the things asked in these questions are likely to be important in the course or one of its units. As you study, ask yourself: (1) What were the most important two or three things we learned on this particular day? and (2) What are the concepts that we were continually using to study the speeches of the course? Work to define and illustrate your answers to these questions.
• Get in the habit of comparing from unit to unit as you study. How is Cold War rhetoric like WW II rhetoric? How are they different?
• Focus on concepts. Know their definitions. Be ready to illustrate them. The glossary will be a start.

If you had trouble with the essay questions:

Essay questions require that you pull things from many parts of the course together, usually applying them to a speech or speeches. They test your command of the logic that governs the study of speaking and leadership.

• Study using comparison and contrast among the people and units of the course.
• Think Diachronically. What changed over the century? Over the different demands on leadership? What was alike?
• Work similarities and differences. What similarities tie the century's discourse together?
• Ultimately, simply going over material -- just knowing "stuff" -- won't be enough for essay questions. You need to assemble things you have learned. To master that skill, you need to practice such assembly. Our discussions are the model for what you do on an essay question.
• Having said that, the richer call upon "stuff" you know the better the answer. So, although knowing stuff is not enough, it helps improve your grade.
• Write some sample questions you think might be asked and write short essays to answer them.

Further advice is available.

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