Suggested Grading Criteria
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Reasons why a paper might not pass:
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PROJECT
§ The paper has no clear or emerging project. The paper works
with text through reference, paraphrase, and/or quotation, but provides
no indication of how this textual work contributes to a larger point
or position in the paper.
WORKING WITH TEXT
§ Although the paper may make reference to the issues raised
by the assignment question, it does not engage with the assigned readings
and does not work effectively with text. The paper privileges the
student's ideas without showing an awareness of the assigned readings.
§ The paper does not follow through on relations the student
tries to establish between his or her own position and the readings
or between the readings themselves.
§ Although the paper indicates that the student has done the
reading, it demonstrates a lack of basic reading comprehension or
a failure to grasp the outline of the argument in the assigned reading.
§ The paper overgeneralizes the assigned reading or depends largely
on summary of the assigned reading that is not pertinent to the assignment
question.
ORGANIZATION
§ The student's paper may have too little coherence from paragraph
to paragraph or it may lack an overarching organizational structure.
GRAMMAR
§ The paper has a significant number of sentence-level errors
that impede understanding.
Serious errors include: sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and
subject-verb agreement errors.
Less serious errors, such as faulty parallelism, problems with pronoun
reference, and spelling errors, may become serious through their high
occurrence.
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PROJECT
§ In a passing paper there is evidence of an emerging project--something
the student wants the paper to accomplish, the beginnings of a focus
or argument.
§ Papers often achieve a passing grade by taking a clear position
once--perhaps at the end of the essay--even when the project does
not coalesce in the rest of the paper.
WORKING WITH TEXT
§ C papers demonstrate the student's ability to work with more
than one source text or to respond to the ideas in the class texts.
§ The connective
thinking in evidence in a C-level paper is typically restricted
to relationships between ideas and/or evidence in the readings. That
is, the C-level paper generally lacks a clear sense that the student's
voice contributes to the conversation.
§ In a passing pager, if the student writer has elected to summarize,
the quality of the summary demonstrates significant reading comprehension
and often helps the student begin to define a focus or stake out a
position.
ORGANIZATION
§ Passing papers consistently create coherent relationships between
paragraphs, but may not have developed a larger organizational structure
that governs the entire paper.
GRAMMAR
§ A passing paper has sentence-level errors under control. Although
errors may appear on each page, they do not significantly impede the
meaning of the essay.
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Papers in the C+ range:
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PROJECT
§ C+ papers clearly have a project, but that project may not
be clearly articulated or it may be a project that is general in
nature.
§ Often, C+ papers have thesis statements that do not represent
the true achievement of the paper and do not express the paper's
actual project. In these papers, there may be a sense that the writer
has not realized that there is a project in the paper.
§ C+ papers may have a particularly unconventional project
or position, even as it develops the project at the C level.
WORKING WITH TEXT
§ C+ papers have several moments of solid work with text. However,
the paper may not indicate how these moments contribute to the overarching
project.
§ C+ papers attempt to engage with the more complicated ideas
and examples from the readings than one finds in the C papers.
§ The moments of working with text may remain implicit: connective
thinking may not be explained fully or at all.
ORGANIZATION
§ C+ papers are often distinguished from B paper because they
lack an overarching organizational structure. There may not be a
clear relationship between all the paragraphs.
GRAMMAR
§ C+ papers have most errors under control.
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B papers may include "C" moments in an otherwise well-reasoned
and well-developed project.
PROJECT
§ The B paper offers a sustained and meaningful structure and
a project that is more complex than one finds in a C-range paper.
That is, while most of the connective thinking that occurs in the
C-range papers relies on using the word "and," connective
thinking in the higher grade ranges involves the use of qualifications,
such as "but," and conditionals, such as "if."
§ The B paper often showcases the student in the process of
learning something new, even if this learning involves the discovery
of new ways to defend closely held positions.
§ B papers frequently repeat rather than reconsider or explore
the new insights they have to offer. If the student writer considers
the project's action horizon,
this consideration is frequently in its earliest stages and may
seem gestural or grasping for significance.
§ B papers can represent the project of the paper early on
in the essay with some degree of accuracy.
WORKING WITH TEXT
§ The B paper shows the student beginning to take interpretive
risks, responding to the assignment and to the readings in thoughtful
and distinctive ways.
§ The paper demonstrates that the student is able to work with
a variety of textual protocols. It does not rely exclusively on
summary, reference, or paraphrase, but is able to work with quotation
and think connectively to contribute to the project.
ORGANIZATION
§ The paper demonstrates a certain coherence in its overall
presentation: the relationships between the paper's parts are clear
and well ordered.
GRAMMAR
§ Sentence-level error are minimal and do no impede meaning.
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Papers in the B+ range:
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PROJECT
§ B+ papers do everything B papers do, but they progress from
the repetition of a new idea to a moment, perhaps towards the end
of the paper, where the new knowledge from the beginning of the
paper is questioned, qualified, or complicated. In effect, a B+
paper treats its own beginning as another source text and engages
in dialogue with its own early answers to create new knowledge relative
to itself.
§ Not unlike the C+ paper, the B+ paper may represent this
moment of progress at the end of the paper rather than in the thesis
paragraph. That is, the paper may not represent that the writer
fully understands the actual complexity of his or her own argument.
§ In these papers, the student's own interpretive position
or approach is particularly well-developed.
§ In a B+ paper, one frequently finds the student writer making
a move to explore the action
horizon of his or her position. That is, the student recognizes
that the position taken up in the paper has implications and consequences
and makes some effort to consider what these might be.
WORKING WITH TEXT
§ In a B+ papers, the student writer demonstrates the ability
to convincingly use textual support in developing, extending, or
challenging his or her own evolving position.
§ B+ papers may have more sophisticated work with text, including
an ability to analyze text with particular insight.
§ These papers demonstrate connective thinking where the student's
ideas are in control through most, if not all, of the paper.
ORGANIZATION
§ B+ papers have particularly strong organization. Each paragraph
clearly functions within the paper and contributes to the project
with an overall fluid movement.
GRAMMAR
§ Sentence-level error must be minimal.
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Often an A paper has one or two "B" or even "C"
moments, but they do not significantly detract from the overall
force or accomplishment of the paper.
PROJECT
§ An A paper does all the good things that passing papers
need to do, but an A paper is usually distinguished from B range
work because the student understands his or her own project and
its implications from the outset and represents that understanding
to the reader throughout. The A paper moves through its own project
step by step, even when some of the positions of individual paragraphs
are more carefully worked out than others.
§ An A paper develops new questions and answers out of the
source texts and its own earlier positions throughout the paper,
not just in one moment, as in a B+ paper.
§ Sometimes a paper achieves an A because a student develops
a thoughtful and well-defined interpretive approach and an awareness
of his or her own position in relation to the positions of the assigned
essayists.
WORKING WITH TEXT
§ A papers are often distinguished from B-level work because
the connective thinking is student-centered or because of the sustained
development and effective articulation of a position that is related
to ideas in the readings while not reducible to relationships readily
identifiable in the readings.
§ A papers generally develop projects that cut across the readings
in unanticipated ways.
§ While it is not an absolute requirement, A papers often
provide a sustained moment of reflection on the implications or
consequences of the position the writer has assumed; A papers, in
other words, often imagine that there is an action horizon beyond
the paper where the ideas worked out in the paper might have significance
or influence.
ORGANIZATION
§ The organization is logical, fluid, and clear.
GRAMMAR
§ Sentence-level error must be minimal.
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