Comprehensive Exam
General Information
- Students in the M.A. English Teacher program are required to pass a comprehensive examination. This three-hour test is given twice a year, in the fall and spring semesters.
- The exam is usually taken at the end of the final semester of course work or in the semester following. To be eligible for the exam, M.A. English Teacher students must have completed, or be in the process of completing, five English courses. They must also have a cumulative GPA of 3.00 or higher and have resolved all incompletes in their courses.
- Students must apply to take the Comprehensive Exam through the Brooklyn College WebCentral Portal. Click eServices and Graduate Student Transactions.
- All students are encouraged to purchase the current edition of M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary Terms and to use it in all their literature courses. The identification questions in Part I of the examination will be selected from this book.
- The exam consists of three parts and tests students in the following areas: knowledge of literary terms and historical concepts, understanding of major modern literary critical issues, and ability to write a coherent essay in clear and lively style, free of grammatical errors
M.A. Model Examination
Part One
This section tests your knowledge of literary terms, critical and theoretical approaches, and historical concepts. Listed below are 57 terms from M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary Terms. The exam will feature 15 of these terms, selected at random, from which you will choose five on which to write a single, well-developed paragraph about each. Include definitions, explanations, significance, historical background if applicable, citing examples drawn from literature.
- Allegory
- Alliteration
- Augustan age
- Blank verse
- Canon of literature
- Chivalric romance
- Comedy
- Courtly love
- Cultural studies
- Deconstruction
- Dialogic criticism
- Dramatic irony
- Dream vision
- Elegy
- Enlightenment
- Epic simile
- Feminist Criticism
- Formalism
- Frame story
- Free verse
- Gothic novel
- Great chain of being
- Harlem Renaissance
- Humanism
- Irony
- Marxism
- Metaphor
- Metaphysical poets
- Meter
- Modernism
- Naturalism
- Neoclassic
- New Criticism
- New Historicism
- Old English period
- Postcolonial studies
- Postmodernism
- Poststructuralism
- Problem play
- Prosody
- Psychoanalytic criticism
- Psychological criticism
- Reader-response criticism
- Realism
- Reception theory
- Renaissance
- Restoration
- Romantic
- Satire
- Semiotics
- Seven deadly sins
- Sonnet
- Stream of consciousness
- Structuralist criticism
- Textual criticism
- Tragedy
- Transcendentalism in America
Part Two
This section tests your ability to analyze a passage and write a coherent essay in a clear and lively style, free of grammatical errors. Listed below are eight works representative of different periods and movements. Each semester's exam includes a different set of passages, but each is a representative range of options. You are to pursue a close reading of one of these passages provided (pdf), analyze the passage, and connect your observations to relevant contexts, such as the text's period, genre, or literary movement.
- Julian of Norwich, Shewings (c. 1423)
- John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)
- Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress" (c. 1650)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
- Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900)
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
- James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues" (1957)
- Shani Mootoo, Out on Main Street & Other Stories (1993)
Part Three
This section tests your knowledge of major modern literary critical issues and your ability to write a coherent essay in a clear, lively style, free of grammatical errors. The question is always the same, verbatim.
You have encountered several modern critical approaches during your study for the M.A. degree (such as feminist, psychological, Marxist, post-colonial, and historical). We are interested in knowing how you move from an understanding of the theory to its practical application in the classroom. Discuss how you could integrate one or two modern critical approaches into the teaching of two texts drawn from two different historical periods. You are free to use examples from your own teaching or student-teaching experience. What questions would students respond to, what points would you raise, and how would you raise them, and what activities would help develop students' facility with the critical approach(es) to the texts you have chosen?
Criteria for Grading the M.A. Comprehensive Exam Essays
- Does the writer understand the critical issues raised by the question?
- Is the writer familiar with other theoretical or critical texts than the one cited in the question?
- Has the writer demonstrated breadth of knowledge of texts without becoming superficial?
- Has the writer selected examples from more than one historical time period?
- Is the essay coherent and organized?
- Does the writer indicate the ability to pay close attention to details when analyzing texts?
- Have all parts of the question been considered?
- Are there a minimum of grammar and style problems?
Tips for Students
- Take time to read the question carefully and understand what is being asked.
- Take time to plan your response, including the formulation of a proposition and at least a rough outline of the essay's principal parts and the chief examples you will use.
- Answer all parts of the question.
- It is not necessary to repeat the question, but be sure to address the issues raised and to place them in a theoretical context.
- Tie your examples to critical issues.
- Demonstrate understanding of key critical terms used in the question.
- One way to demonstrate breadth of knowledge of texts is to construct a paragraph that presents a series of examples.
- Be sure to discuss at least two texts (from two different historical periods) in some detail.
- Avoid vague language and broad, unsupported generalizations.
- Avoid merely retelling stories, plots, or narratives.
- Obtain a copy of the current edition of M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary Terms.
