Wednesday, September 22, 2004

You give quizzes?? For poetry??!!!

The answer is yes. I do. And sadly, my students don't fare so well. They're simple questions, really. "In the space below, write an example of alliteration." Or "In the following metaphor, which is the tenor and which is the vehicle?: ". . . the green jungle of our sleep."

Out of 25 total points, the lowest score was . . . well, it was low. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I'm trying to do my part, folks. But it's an uphill battle. The next student that calls a stanza a PARAGRAPH will incur my wrath.

5 comments:

Victoria Chang said...

Gosh, you should post your quiz...I wonder what we practicing poets would score. It might be embarrasing..., but then again, I can only speak for myself.

bjanepr said...

ah, but the difference btwn. a "stanza" and a "verse paragraph" ...

anyway kudos for doing your part, o! love, barb

Oliver de la Paz said...

I'll post the quiz after my other class has taken it. It's not that I don't trust them . . . but I don't trust them. :-D

Anonymous said...

Hey, Oliver--Not only do I give quizzes, I give tests on poetic terms. Long ones. Especially in my undergraduate forms of poetry class--which I teach as a prosody/fixed forms class. Quizzes and tests and book reports. You may be teaching poetry, but it's still school. And school is all about tests.
Allison J.

Oliver de la Paz said...

Exactly, Allison. School is school. And not only that, but our department spells out what the GOALS for our majors should be. One of the goals is that they learn the vocabulary for later upper division courses.

Quizzes are also a pretty good way to determine which students are there simply to get the ". . . writing requirement out of the way."