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Glossary
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These grading criteria were created out of necessity.
When we started developing The New Humanities Reader, we
discovered that we didn't quite know how to describe the kinds of
papers we were looking for or the kinds of papers we were getting.
As we piloted the reader over the years, we started out just being
able to say that the student work we saw was "different in
some way that was hard to define," the papers were not like
the ones we used to getting when we had assigned students to read
and write about essays written by literary critics and theorists.
With the help of our fellow program directors and our fine teaching
faculty, we developed more precise terms to use when discussing
how we were evaluating the student papers and what it was we most
wanted the students to do with the assignments we were generating.
These terms are now fully embedded into the grading criteria we
recommend. And so, to help you better understand our grading criteria,
we would like to provide you with a glossary of the key terms in
our system of assessment.
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| Project: |
A central aspect of any paper is its project.
Simply put, a student's project is what he or she wants to achieve
in the paper. A student creates a project by contributing to the conversation
raised by the texts read for class. In defining a project, it is essential
that a student establish a relationship between two or more texts
or ideas and then place that relationship in a wider context. One
of the signs that a paper has a project is the creation of new ideas
that are affiliated with the assignment question, but generated from
the writer's unique attempt to answer that question.
A project can be thought of as analogous to an argument; however,
we have done our best to avoid the language of argument because we
believe that writing is best used by college students as a speculative
instrument for thinking or discovering new thoughts. Arguments tend
to remain trapped in the texts, as students use one author to prove
another author right or wrong. A project, as we intend it, incorporates
a much broader sense of what a paper can and should accomplish. The
point of the writing we try to sponsor is not to prove author X or
author Y wrong, but rather to consider what difference is makes if
author X is wrong about the dangers of genetic engineering or author
Y is right about the future of civil society. Thus, a project sets
out to explore the implications of any given argument--those made
by others and those made by student writers themselves as they engage
in the act of composing. (We like to describe the implication of any
given agreement as that argument's "action horizon.")
Students may be asked to stake out a position, make an argument, or
have a thesis as a way to articulate their paper's project in the
introduction. While these terms are not interchangeable, they all
share a focus on a writer's ability to define her project's assumptions,
goals, and implications. |
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Action Horizon:
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When we read and evaluate a student's project, we a particularly
interested in whether or not that project has an action horizon.
The action horizon, as we define it, is where the student imagines
possibilities and solutions to the problems and issues raised by
the assignment, by the reading, and by student's own project. The
most effective articulations and explorations of a project's action
horizon avoid simple solutions ("we should just ban biotech"),
recognizing instead the complexity of real world problems and working
through the texts and the student's own ideas to imagine new possibilities.
For more on the meaning of this term, please see "Teaching
the Action Horizon," our introductory essay in the Teacher's
Manual.
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| Organization: |
This is a fairly standard term in evaluating student work. In our
criteria, we are interested in the degree to which the student's organization
of the paper helps the student to define and develop his or her project.
To achieve a working level of clarity, students should express, explain,
and explore a central claim in each paragraph. The paper's paragraphs
should connect logically to each other. In addition, the paragraphs
should all work toward developing and supporting a paper's project.
At more advanced levels, the organizational structure will grow more
complex: it might incorporate the consideration of qualifications,
exceptions, alternative explanations; the organization might also
include the trademarks of the most experienced writers--digressions,
extended anecdotes, sectioned arguments that are drawn together in
the final pages. |
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| Making
Connections: |
Because we believe that reading plays a central role in the writing
process, we have emphasized through our assignments, our sequences,
and through our choice of essays the important role that writing
can play in making connections between different readings.
When writing is used in this way, it generates new thoughts and
it fosters creativity, two activities that are not always linked
to the work of the expository essay.
While we remain convinced of the importance of training students
to work closely with the assigned readings and we continue to train
them to demonstrate this work through the effective use of quotation,
we also encourage our students to think more broadly about what
work they can do with the assigned texts. While close reading is
a skill that is highly valued in some writing practices, one need
not search far in the university to find examples of highly valued
ways of writing that rely more heavily on paraphrase and summary.
What we hope to encourage through our grading criteria is a kind
of thinking that doesn't define the end point as being an iron clad,
fully supported rendering of one of the assigned readings in the
NHR; we'd rather that the students learn how to use the readings
to generate new questions, explore unfamiliar terrain, and work
out new ideas. Making connections of this sort can't be done if
one reads without comprehension; it also can't be realized if one's
highest concern is fidelity to every nuance of the assigned readings.
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| Following Conventions: |
A student will need to follow citation conventions,
as described by the instructor, the Writing Program, and the university.
The words and ideas of others need to be acknowledged as appropriate
throughout the paper. A student should identify the source of quotations,
the source of paraphrased ideas and facts, and the author, title,
and context of each source text. |
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