Grading Criteria

The following outline provides some general guidelines you may find helpful.  I will comment specifically on each of these four areas—material, organization, style, and mechanics—when responding to your work.  “Definitions of Letter Grades” expands on these descriptions to give you a sense of how they work together to establish your grade.

    I.      Material: Is the material well-chosen for the particular situation, audience, and purpose?

            A.      Generalizations backed up with adequate specific supporting detail.

            B.      All points adequately covered, with no unnecessary material.

            C.      Accurate information.

            D.      All points logically presented and supported.

            E.      Material free of contradictions.

   II.      Organization:        Is the material well organized for the particular situation, audience and purpose?  Does the format support the organization?

            A.      Clear, logical overall structure, signaled (where appropriate) by headings and forecasting statements.

            B.      Clear, logical paragraph structure.

            C.      Smooth transitions.

            D.      Appropriate introduction and conclusion.

            E.      Well-placed material (for logic, psychological effect, and emphasis).

  III.      Style:    Is the style appropriate for the situation, the audience, and the writer’s ethos?

            A.      Clarity

            B.      Conciseness

            C.      Emphasis

            D.      Tone

            E.      Coherence

            F.      Diction 

                     1.      Appropriate to the audience

                     2.      Avoids clichés and unnecessary jargon

                     3.      Uses an appropriate tone

            G.      Sentence structure

                     1.      Avoids monotony

                     2.      Avoids primer or overly complex style

  IV.      Mechanics:   meets at least a general standard for mechanical correctness (one error per 100 words).

            A.      Grammar

B.         Spelling

C.         Punctuation

Definitions of Letter Grades and Grade Scale

The following definitions of letter grades may help you understand what a particular grade in this class means.

A—Outstanding work.  Shows a superior completion of assignment.  Provides excellent selection of content, organization, and wording of material to fit the rhetorical needs of the particular situation.  Uses a style that is fluent and coherent.  Has few if any mechanical errors.  Shows clear understanding of readings, insight, perceptiveness, originality, and thought.                                           900-1000

B—Good work, significantly above level necessary to meet course requirements.  Has a thorough, well-organized analysis of the assignment.  Shows judgment and tact in the presentation of material appropriate for the intended audience and purpose.  Supports ideas well with concrete details.  Has an interesting, precise, and clear style.  Is free of major mechanical errors.  Strong, interesting work, although minor problems remain.            800-899          

C—Meets all basic requirements of the course and assignment.  Provides a satisfactory analysis of the writing task, subject, and audience.  Accomplishes its purpose with adequate content and detail.  Uses details, organization, and expression appropriate for the rhetorical context.  Has acceptable mechanics.  Nothing remarkably good or bad about the work.      700-799          

D—Meets the assignment but is weak in one of the major areas (content, organization, style, mechanics) or offers a routine, inadequate treatment.  Shows generally substandard work with some redeeming features.              600-699

F—Unacceptable work in one or more of the major areas.  Fails to meet one or more of the basic requirements of the course or the assignment.  May fail to cover essential points, or may digress to nonessential material.  May have inadequate development resulting from failure to support generalizations or from unclear relationships between generalizations and examples or details.  May lack adequate organization and show confusion or misunderstanding of rhetorical context.  May use an inappropriate tone, poor word choice, excessive repetition, or awkward sentence structure.  May be unclear.      Under 600