IR Senior Seminar

Midterm & Final Review

I. GENERAL RULES OF THUMB

A. Time

Essay tests such as this one put a premium on time. You will not be able to commit all the details about a topic to paper. Concentrate instead on how the key concepts relate to one another – and how specific examples support the various points you make. Doing this successfully, of course, requires that you BUDGET YOUR TIME.

B. Organization

Despite time constraints you still need to be organized in your writing. I suggest you take a minute or two to outline your answer before you even begin writing it. This also has the added benefit of providing a personal check against omitting portions of a multi-faceted question, something that is easy to do when you are under strict time constraints.

C. Writing Style

Remember that you will be graded on your ability to express your ideas clearly as well as on the content of your ideas. This is, after all, a politics course where communication (or lack thereof) is essential to determining the outcome. Subject content is emphasized first and foremost in evaluating your answers, but the clarity of your writing determines how successfully you get that message across. In simple terms, this means you need to write legibly, use proper grammar, and avoid awkward sentence structure.

II. SPECIFIC QUESTION TYPES

A. Essay

There will be one long essay. A complete answer should contain:

1) an introduction with your thesis

2) body w/approximately three to four main points (it may be helpful to approach these as IDs)

3) conclusion which summarizes thesis and supporting points and offers suggestions, solutions

B. Identification (IDs/Short Essay)

There will be approximately three to five identification questions that are best treated as shorter essays. You must include a definition, historical origin or reason for existence, examples, and relevant theoretical analysis. In many cases it may also be helpful to refer to competing perspectives.

C. Short Answer

There will be five to ten short answer questions covering various readings or material presented in class.

III. COURSE MATERIAL – Final Exam

This exam covers readings and class discussions since the beginning of the semester. As you prepare, think about both the intricacies of the concepts themselves and the larger picture of how they relate to one another. Use your syllabus and table of contents as a guide here.