For your final exam this semester, you will not write a “paper” but a final reflective essay that examines your writing strategies this semester. You can also revise any assignment. The goal at the end of the final exam is that your grade is the best representation of the work that you've produced for this course.

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The purpose of the final exam, as a genre, is to encourage students to reflect upon the course material and to make connections between topics, theories, and discussions to help ensure that course goals and objectives are met for the semester.

For students, the final exam is their last opportunity to illustrate what they have learned over the course of the semester/year, and, for instructors, this course is the last opportunity to determine whether students have mastered the necessary material to move on in their academic studies.

Through your first semester of First-Year Composition, we have discussed the purposes, development, and features of effective academic writing.

Effective Academic Writing Illustrates how Writing is a Process: Effective academic writing requires time and meaningful contemplation. Effective writing shows evidence of the writing process (researching, brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, proofreading).

Effective Academic Writing is Developed: Effective academic writing is on-topic and follows the directions of the assignment.

Introductions effectively open up the paper and engage the audience to continue reading through the prose. They also offer support and research for claims made. The introductions provide, either implicitly or explicitly, thesis statements that indicate to audiences the purpose and content of the work.

In the discussion sections, the writer makes his/her point precisely and directly. Writers introduce unfamiliar material to audiences. Writers offer specific examples from specific sources to illustrate, clarify, elaborate, or interpret points.

Conclusions provide interesting, unique, or unexplored reflections on the topic.

Effective Academic Writing is Organized: Effective academic writers understand how audiences expect specific “organizational” features (introductory paragraph(s), subject headings, topic sentences, developed paragraphs that provide ample research and support, concluding paragraph(s) that bring the discussion to logical ends). Academic writers recognize that by ignoring or failing to realize their audience’s expectations, their works might not be considered rhetorically effective.

Effective Academic Writing Utilizes Effective Styles and Tones: Effective academic writing is clear, fluid, and direct. Effective academic writing flows from sentence-to-sentence, paragraph-to-paragraph, discussion section-to-discussion section. Effective writing utilizes transitions, combines sentences, varies sentence structures, and cuts excess words to help the paper “flow.”

Effective Academic Writing Illustrates the Importance of Mechanics and Grammar: Effective academic writers recognize that audiences often expect surface-level perfection regarding mechanics and grammar. Effective academic writers continue to learn and review mechanical and grammatical problems to improve their discourses. Effective academic writers recognize that mechanically and grammatically pristine papers are meaningless if they fail to convey the points intended.

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About the Marketable Skills. It is also important that students are able to articulate how their skills first-year composition course translate into marketable skills in your new profession. We want you to leave this course able to articulate your own marketable skills.

Marketable skills are the abilities, knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs that equip you for a fruitful career and productive life. These marketable skills--also called transferable skills, portable skills, or employability skills--are acquired through formal education, like your writing courses, and through informal experiences, such as extracurricular activities, student organizations, hobbies, and volunteer/community service work.

There are two large bodies of skills that employers are seeking: hard skills and soft skills.

Hard skills include the specific knowledge that is required for a job, such as coding or carpentry. Hard skills are teachable abilities that your instructor might grade or assess. Generally, students learn hard skills through education, apprenticeships, certification programs, and on-the-job training. These skills are usually listed on job postings. Hard skills are usually included in resumés and applications, and applicants that possess the minimum skills required will be hired. Students are usually good at highlighting these skill sets.

Soft skills are generally not job-specific and include skills such as critical thinking and communication. Soft skills are also the traits that make a good employee, such as showing up on time, being able to “read” others’ emotional cues, and getting along with other people. Soft skills differ from hard skills in that they are more closely aligned with personality traits, behaviors, and attitudes rather than technical knowledge. Soft skills also are learned and developed with practice and experience. Specific soft skills may or may not be listed in job descriptions, but they are increasingly becoming an important factor in getting an interview and advancing a career. Students generally have a more difficult time highlighting these skills because they may not be required for a particular job, even though they may be as important as the hard skills.

Employers value job candidates with both sets of these marketable skills, hard and soft. Therefore, we’ll continue to work on both in your writing courses. While it would be impossible to list all the skills, certain skills are often most important to employers: communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, creative thinking, teamwork, leadership, positive attitude, strong work ethic, adaptability.

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This final exam, then, is two parts:

Read/Reflect
- Read from The Hub:
  - "Strategies for Success: Revision" (pg xiv).
  - "ENGL 1301: Final Reflection" (pg xxix).
Apply/Experiment
- Complete Final Exam: Final Reflection.
- Complete Final Exam: Revision.