Final Examination

CRTW 201

Dr. Fike

9:30 section: Your exam is at 11:30 on Wednesday, December 4th.

2:00 section: Your exam is at 3:00 on Monday, December 9th.

Here is some information for you from Richard Paul and Linda Elder’s The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools:

•   Master/accomplished Thinker: Good habits of thought are becoming second nature.

•   Advanced Thinker: We advance in keeping with our practice.

•   Practicing Thinker: We recognize the need for regular practice.

•   Beginning Thinker: We try to improve but without much regular practice.

•   Challenged Thinker: We are faced with significant problems in our thinking.

•   Unreflective Thinker: We are unaware of significant problems in our thinking.

The categories are fleshed out at http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/critical-thinking-development-a-stage-theory/483.

Directions: The exam is to be written in a bluebook in class, not at home. Use blue or black ink (ballpoint, not felt tip or any other kind of point). Write only on one side of each page in your large bluebook (8.5 x 11", available at the bookstore: you may want to have 2 with you). Leave one-inch left and right margins. Do not write below the last line on each page. It is very okay to use books and notes, including a dictionary. Chinese students may use their electronic dictionaries; no other electronic devices are allowed. Bring a copy of this document to the exam. Do not hand it in with your bluebook. Please number your responses 1-5 and skip a line between items; do NOT number your paragraphs! Each response should be at least a full page in your large blue book. Note: Your grade will be based primarily on sufficiency and lower-order correctness, so be sure to write substantial answers in response to each item and to do so with as few lower-order errors as possible. Development is key. Length counts. Please do not use the word "you" or the word "quote" as a noun in your answers. Underline book titles. (Berger's text is a book.) Use quotation marks for titles of essays. Each response is worth 2 points. The exam is worth 10 points.

1. Using the six categories above, explain what kind of thinker you were when you began this course. Make an argument that you were a specific type of thinker. Discuss specific examples that support your point. The critical thinking traits might well be part of your answer to 1 and 2.
2. Using the six categories above, explain what kind of thinker you are now. Make an argument that you are a specific type of thinker. Discuss specific examples that support your point.  These might include ways in which you have used the elements and the standards in your life or in another class. In other words, how has our class become “real” for you?  Where else do you find yourself using the tools that CRTW provides?
3. To what do you attribute the change or the lack of change in your thinking? Why has CRTW had or not had an impact on your thinking?  In other words, what tools are working for you, and what things do you still need to work on?
4. What have you discovered/realized so far this semester about your impediments, background stories, and biases as a result of taking this course? In other words, what kind of intellectual baggage might be hindering your critical thinking? Discuss specific examples that support your point. 
5. Which course readings (Wilson, the anthology readings) have had the most impact on you this semester? Did you discover your FBIs in something that we read? Has a text motivated you to become a specific type of thinker? Has a text impeded your progress? Write about 3 texts. Wilson may be one of them but does not have to be. If you prefer, write about three texts from Ways of Reading. Or you can write about Wilson and two texts from Ways. You may NOT write about Said, Nosich's book, or Writing Analytically! Anzaldúa's two chapters count as only one text; if you write about her work, you still have to write about two other texts.

There should be some reference to the elements, standards, and traits in your answers.

Do not forget:

• Bring a large bluebook and a copy of the exam.
• Write in a large bluebook with a blue or black BALLPOINT pen.
• Write only on one side of the page.
• Do not write below the last line on each page.
• Leave margins on the left and right.
• Your handwriting must be legible and neither too large nor too small for me to read easily.
• Wilson's book is not a "novel," and we did not read any "stories."
• Italicize book titles; put chapter and article titles in quotation marks.

• Forbidden!: You will want to review this list of errors. If you have a single fragment, run-on, comma splice, or dangling modifier, your answer will automatically become a C no matter how substantial it may be. You should know how to write a complete sentence by the time you finish CRTW.

(This final exam is adapted from a midterm assessment instrument borrowed from Dr. John Bird.)