English Grammar Exam

All Cronkite School students, including those who are transferring from another institution or changing their majors, are required to demonstrate a mastery of English grammar by achieving a passing grade on the school’s English grammar exam. Students are allowed to take the test only once. If a student does not demonstrate the requisite mastery of grammar on the exam, s/he will enroll in JMC 101 Grammar for Journalists, a course taught by the Cronkite School each semester. Once the student successfully completes the course, s/he can then move on to JMC 201 and the rest of the Cronkite School skills curriculum.

The test will be administered by the Cronkite School on the dates listed below. Registration is not required.

To prepare for the test, the school recommends students complete the grammar sections of the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/).

The school also recommends the following grammar Web sites:

• Big Dog’s Grammar: http://www.aliscot.com/bigdog/
• Grambo: A Test of the Emergency Grammar System – John Russial’s site from the University of Oregon: http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/~russial/grammar/grambo.html#thetest
• “Sentence Diagrams,” Eugene R. Moutoux: http://www.geocities.com/gene_moutoux/diagrams.htm
• Common Errors in English, Paul Brians: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html (Be sure to scroll down.)

There are also many good grammar texts.