Midterm review

As stated on the Assignments page, the midterm exam has both an in-class and a take-home component. The in-class portion covers class terms, concepts, and readings. The take-home portion asks you to create a multimedia text in response to a prompt. The in-class component will be done in class on Thursday, Oct. 18. You will be given the take-home component when you turn in your in-class exam. The take-home component will be due on Thursday, Oct. 25. The two components will be combined to form your overall midterm grade.

• be able to define and use all of the course terms, including (but not limited to):
  • sense of purpose
  • audience
  • context
  • strategies
  • medium
  • arrangement
  • testing
  • genre
  • subject
  • historical contexts
  • situational contexts
  • structural elements
  • design
  • composition
  • rhetoric
  • argument
  • design plan
  • enthymeme
  • metaphor
  • allusion
• be thoroughly familiar with all the course readings:
  • Beyond Words excerpt 1
  • Beyond Words excerpt 2
  • Compose, Design, Advocate excerpt 1
  • Compose, Design, Advocate excerpt 2
  • Twitchell - "What We Are to Advertisers"
  • Calfee - "How Advertising Informs to Our Benefit"
  • Hine - "What's in a Package"
  • Solomon - "Masters of Desire"
  • Marchand - "The Parable of the Democracy of Goods"
  Pay particular attention to steps, stages, lists, terms, procedures, recommendations, diagrams, etc.


• be able to discuss a prompt or theme intelligently utilizing more than one of our readings

  Example question: Discuss the role of gender, race, or age in American advertising using at least two of our readings from Project 2.



• be able to analyze multimedia texts in the classroom using our rhetorical elements and other appropriate class concepts (an example text for analysis is linked at the bottom of this page)