The final exam covers the work we have done over the entire semester, and will take place on Wednesday, April 21, from 7pm (Pacific Time). You will have 24 hours to complete it (you will email it to me by 7pm Pacific Time the following day), but it is designed to take you no more than two and a half hours.
The exam is now available here.
Though it is an “open book” exam, and though you have 24 hours to complete it, I strongly suggest that you treat it as a “normal” exam. In other words, a) that you spend the days beforehand revising and preparing for it, b) that you assign a discrete period of time to write it (which you could break into two chunks, if you want), and c) that you use the Internet etc. minimally if at all. I feel very much that you will do better on the exam if you do this.
Remember: what interests me is your interpretation of the texts. It is likely that looking things up at the last minute will mean that you do worse, not better.
If you find yourself spending more than two and a half hours on this exam, then something is going wrong.
Another way of thinking about this is that our playlist lasts almost two hours (106 minutes and 10 seconds, not including any adverts YouTube may add). If you start the playlist at the same time as you start the exam, then you should be well into the second part of the exam by the time it finishes… and you easily should be done before you have the chance to play the whole thing over again!
You may use a dictionary or other aids in this exam. But while you should do your best to ensure that what you write is grammatical, clear, and even stylish, your written Spanish will only be penalized if it is unintelligible.
Busco lecturas interesantes (no necesariamente “correctas”), bien pensadas y bien argumentadas con evidencia detallada tomada de los textos.
The exam has three parts. Each part is worth the same amount: 33.3% of the total mark.
I. The first part takes exactly the same format as you have seen in the midterm exams, and it will be about Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba. If you need reminding about the format of the midterms, they are available on the course website. But in short, there will be an extract from the play, followed by, first, three short questions (which you should expect to answer with a few sentences each) and, second, a longer question (for which you should expect to write a couple of paragraphs) about the extract and its relationship to the larger work from which it is taken.
Again, the extract chosen for this first part will come from La casa de Bernarda Alba.
II. The second part asks you to provide definitions for three concepts that we have discussed over the semester. You should write more or less a page for each definition (depending on the size of your handwriting, whether you are double-spacing etc.). In each case, you should refer to examples from the texts we have read where this is relevant and/or helpful.
These three concepts will be taken from the following list:
- La literatura
- La poesía
- La narrativa
- El ensayo
- El drama
- La tradición
III. The third part is an essay question. You should write more or less 2-3 pages (again, depending on the size of your handwriting, whether you are double-spacing etc.). You should also include concrete and detailed analysis of at least two of the texts we have read. Moreover, these texts should be of different genres: e.g., a poem and a short story; or a short story and a play.
You will have a choice of two essay prompts, which will be taken from the following list:
- Compara el tratamiento e imagen de la sexualidad (o el deseo) en por lo menos dos de los textos que hemos leído.
- Compara el tratamiento e imagen de la mujer (o las mujeres) en por lo menos dos de los textos que hemos leído.
- Compara el manejo o uso del espacio (o la espacialidad) en por lo menos dos de los textos que hemos leído.
- Compara el manejo o uso del tiempo (o la temporalidad) en por lo menos dos de los textos que hemos leído.
- Compara el manejo o uso de las emociones (o el afecto) en por lo menos dos de los textos que hemos leído.
In short, you will have:
Part I: Questions about an extract from Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba [33.3%]
Part II: Three short-answer definitions of key concepts [33.3%]
Part III: A short essay chosen from one of two possible prompts [33.3%]
As they are each worth the same percentage, you should probably spend about the same amount of time (and write roughly the same amount of words) on each part of the exam.
To see how all this works, here is a final exam from a previous year:
One more thing: the exam will cover approaches to the texts that we have discussed in class. There is no particular need to have memorized the various technical terms described in a book such as Aproximaciones, though you may use such terms if you find them helpful. Likewise, I will not expect any background knowledge of author biographies, literary movements, or the history of Spain or Latin America beyond what we have discussed in the class itself.
