As indicated on your syllabus, there will be at least one unannounced quiz per week testing your comprehension of that day’s assigned reading and your awareness of some basic facts about the work and author.  I wish to stress, however, that quizzes are not intended simply as a kind of police action.  Rather, they are intended to reward those students who do the assigned reading and are thus most prepared to contribute to our discussion that day.  More than any other assignment in this course, quizzes are about effort.  If you make the effort, you will do well.

 
Studying for Quizzes
The best way to prepare for quizzes is, of course, to do all of the assigned reading closely, including looking up words that are unfamiliar to you.  Also, for each work, you should memorize the following information: 1) the correct spelling of the author’s name and the names of any major characters in the work; 2) the author’s country of origin; and 3) the date the work was originally published.  All of this information (except for characters’ names) is included in the header note that opens each author’s section of your anthology.

Quiz Format and Grading
The format of quizzes will vary, including short answer, fill in the blank, multiple choice, and matching.  There will usually be about five questions, with one letter-grade deducted for each wrong answer.  If you get half or more of the questions wrong, the quiz will be failed.  Overall, grading is at my discretion: I will sometimes deduct more or less depending on the difficulty of a question.   If at any time you are unsure about how your grade was assessed, or if you think an answer was incorrectly marked, please speak to me.  Retain all of your quizzes for future reference.  At the end of the semester, I will give you a summary listing all grades and your final grade (the lowest quiz grade will be dropped).  If there is a mistake, you will need to produce the quiz in question so that I can correct the error.

Make-up Quizzes
If you miss a quiz due to absence or lateness, you must make up the quiz by the end of the day upon which you return (e.g., if you miss a quiz on Wednesday, you have to make it up on Friday).  You can make up quizzes during my office hours or after class.  Remember that it is your responsibility to find out if you missed a quiz and to arrange a prompt make up.