Here’s a detailed rubric on how your essays will be graded in this class. When I grade your essays, I actually grade them holistically, meaning I give each essay just one single grade after reading it carefully. I don’t try to determine whether you receive a 3 or 4 for your idea, a 4 or 5 for your organization, or a 2 or 3 for your development. However, I hope this rubric will give you a better idea about what aspects I look at and what kind of criteria I use when I grade your essay. Therefore, use this rubric as a guideline when you check your own writing.
| Point/Grade | 6 (A) | 5 (A-/B+) | 4 (B) | 3 (C) | 2 (D) | 1 (F) |
Ideas
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Ideas are insighful, thought-provoking, and focused so that they consistently support a central idea. | Ideas are focused to support the topic and a central idea, but may not be consistently insightful or thought-provoking. | Ideas support the topic and central idea with some focus. | Ideas are cliched or general, but demonstrate some support of the topic or a central idea. | Ideas are confusing to the reader and unfocused for the topic at hand. Ambiguous central idea. | No discernable purpose or thesis or focus. |
Organization
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Organization is coherent, unified and effective in support of the paper’s purpose and consistently demonstrates effective and appropriate transitions between ideas and paragraphs. | Organization is coherent, unified and effective in support of the paper’s purpose and usually demonstrates effective and appropriate transitions between ideas and paragraphs. | Organization is mostly coherent and unified in support of the essay’s purpose, but could be tighter and more effective. May demonstrate weak transitions between ideas or paragraphs. | Organization is generally coherent in support of the essay’s purpose but is ineffective at times and may demonstrate abrupt or weak transitions between ideas or paragraphs. | Organization is confusing and fragmented in support of the essay’s purpose and demonstrates a lack of structure or coherence that negatively affects readability. | Organization is confused to the extent that the ideas and examples lack clarity and understanding. |
Development
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Development includes abundant details and examples that arouse audience interest. Provides relevant, concrete, specific and insightful evidence in support of sound logic. | Development is uneven, but more than adequate with details and examples that arouse audience interest. Provides relevant, concrete evidence in support of sound logic. | Development is adequate. Details and examples provide concrete, specific evidence in support of sound logic. | Development is sufficient but general, providing adequate details and examples in some places. Evidence and reasons may lead to a few logical fallacies or unsupported claims. | Development is insufficient, providing scarce or inappropriate details, evidence, and examples that lead to logical fallacies or unsupported claims. | Development is insufficient to the extent that there are few or no examples, reasons, or support for the ideas. |
| Audience | Writing targets and demonstrates an awareness of audience. | Demonstrates a general awareness of audience | Demonstrates an uneven awareness of audience | Audience awareness may be vague. | Little evidence of audience awareness | No demonstration of an awareness of audience |
Style
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Style is confident, readable and rhetorically effective in tone, incorporating varied sentence structure and precise word choice. | Style is confident, readable and rhetorically effective in tone, incorporating varied sentence structure and word choice. | Style is readable and rhetorically effective in tone, incorporating some varied sentence structure. | Style is readable, but inconsistent in tone, sometimes lacking sentence variety or effective word choice. | Style is mostly readable, but lacks sentence variety. | Style is incoherent or inappropriate in tone, including a lack of sentence variety, ineffective or inappropriate word choice. |
Grammar & Mechanics
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Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are conventionally appropriate. | Very few “errors” in grammar, spelling, and punctuation | Few “errors” in grammar, spelling and punctuation | Some distracting, but not serious, problems in grammar, spelling and punctuation. | Includes many distracting “errors” in grammar, spelling, and punctuation | Serious problems with conventional grammar, spelling, and punctuation such that meaning is obstructed. |
Format
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Format is correct, meets all assignment directions, and works expertly to support the essay’s purpose. | Format is correct, meets all assignment directions, and supports the essay’s purpose. | Format is correct, meets all assignment directions, and works generally to support the essay’s purpose | Format is mostly correct, meets critical aspects of assignment directions, and works mostly to support the essay’s purpose. | Format is faulty, does not meet sufficient aspects of the assignment direction, and does not support the essay’s purpose. | Format is faulty, does not conform to the assignment, and has no clear sense of documentation style. In addition, there is evidence of plagiarism. |