Preparing for the Midterm Exam

You can and probably should study with classmates.

You will receive no additional credit for answering more questions than required. If you do answer more, make it clear which one(s) I should grade. Otherwise, I will not grade all of them and pick the best one(s); I will simply grade the first 4 IDs and the first essay that you have written, and ignore the rest.

Identifications

These are worth 20% of your total exam grade, so you should spend about 10 minutes writing them. Don't spend so much time writing the IDs that you run out of time on the essay.

You have been given a list of possible IDs to study, so you should be prepared to write on any of them.

Obviously, there are important terms that are not included on this list. It may be worthwhile to assemble and study at least a short list of such items. Even if they do not appear on this section of the exam, they are likely to be relevant to some of the essay questions.

A good answer to an ID should have 2 parts:

• Identify who/what the item is. This includes giving the historical context: date, location, relevant background events.
• Explain the significance: why do we care about this item?

How precise do dates need to be?

• In general, dates need to be more precise in cases where the dates are known more precisely, and where the events are more recent and more important.
• If you don't know an exact date, an approximation is better than nothing.
• Don't be afraid to give as precise a date as possible. I will not penalize you for being more precise than necessary.

If you know very little about an item, giving generalizations is better than nothing. For example, suppose you are writing on Louis XVI: even if you know nothing about him specifically except that he was king of France, you will get some credit if you can provide some facts about French kings in general.

Don't write fewer than 4 IDs. Even if you know absolutely nothing about an item, you can at least guess a date and location. If you guess well, you will get some credit.

Essay

This is worth 80% of your total exam grade, so you should spend about 40 minutes writing it. A good answer will be several paragraphs long.

You have been given some possible essay questions in advance. This will make your preparation easier, but it also means that you will be expected to have given some careful thought to these questions ahead of time.

When you are taking the exam, take a moment to write an outline before you start writing the essay.

Be sure to answer all required parts of the question. If a question offers a list of suggested areas to consider, you do not have to cover all of them, but it is unlikely that you could write a good answer without covering at least some of them.