Grades

The following criteria and rubric serve two purposes: first, they are meant to give you a means of self-evaluation as you draft and revise your essays; second, they are meant to translate the letter grades you receive on your revised drafts into more useful terms. Ideally, a grade should be more than the end of a discussion about your work – rather, it should serve the practical purpose of helping you to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your own writing, and should also help you focus on how to improve your writing in the future. By understanding the criteria and rubric used to arrive at your grades, you and I will be in the best position to evaluate together the degree to which you, as a writer, and I, as a reader, either are or are not on the same page.

A general note: Not all of these criteria will apply to every essay you write, since certain standards pertain to elements that will be more central to the complex essays you will write later in the semester.

Criteria

  • Thesis: Is there a central argument in the essay? Does it fulfill the assignment? Does it address some problem, issue, or controversy of consequence? Is the thesis clearly stated at the beginning of the essay? Is it interesting and complex? Is it argued throughout the essay?
  • Structure: Is the argument clearly organized? Is it easy for a reader to understand the main points? Does it develop and is it unified? Is it easy to follow throughout the entirety of the essay?
  • Evidence and Analysis: Does the argument offer supporting evidence for each of its points? Is the evidence sufficient and appropriate? Is the analysis of the evidence insightful and convincing? Is the evidence properly attributed? Is the bibliographical information correct?
  • Sources: Are all the appropriate or assigned sources being used? Are they introduced in an understandable way? Is their purpose in the argument clear? Do they do more than merely affirm the writer’s viewpoint or present a “straw man” for the writer to knock down? Are responsible inferences drawn from them? Are they properly attributed? Is the bibliographical information correct?
  • Style: Is the style appropriate for its audience and subject matter? Is the writing concise, cohesive, and to the point? Are the sentences clear and grammatically correct? Are there spelling, proofreading, and formatting errors? Does the writer engage his or her readers respectfully?

 

Rubric

Grades are based on the evidence of the work submitted, not on the effort or time spent on the work. Pluses and minuses on grades represent shades of difference in quality.

A: Work that gives an impression of excellence in all the criteria listed. Such work is ambitious and perceptive. It grapples with interesting, complex ideas, and explores well-chosen evidence revealingly. The argument enhances, rather than underscores the reader’s and writer’s knowledge; it does not simply repeat what has been taught or what someone else had said. It provides a context for its thesis. A general reader outside the class would be enriched, not confused, by reading it. Its beginning opens up, rather than flatly announces, its thesis; its end brings closure to its ideas, rather than closing them off. The language is clean, precise, and often elegant. A reader feels surprised, delighted, and/or changed upon encountering it. Only its writer could have illuminated the material in this way, and the writer’s stake in the material is obvious without being trumpeted.

B: Work that gives an impression of general superiority in all the criteria listed. Such work reaches high in its aims and achieves many of them. It has solid ideas that are explored, but some points require more analysis or some stray thoughts do not fit into the overall argument. The language is generally clear and precise but occasionally not. The evidence is relevant, but it may be too little; the context for the evidence may not be sufficiently explored, so that a reader has to make the connections that the writer should have made more clearly.

Or: Work that reaches less high than A work but thoroughly achieves its aims. Such work is solid, but the reasoning and argument are nonetheless rather routine. The argument’s limitations are in its conception rather than its execution.

C: Work that gives an impression of competence in all the criteria listed. Such work has problems in one or more of the following areas: conception (it has at least one main idea, but that idea is usually unclear); structure (it is disorganized and confusing); evidence (it is weak or inappropriate; it is often presented without context or compelling analysis); style (it is often unclear, awkward, imprecise, or contradictory). Such work may repeat a main point rather than develop an argument or it may touch upon many points. Often its punctuation, grammar, spelling, paragraphing, and transitions are a problem.

Or: Work that is largely a plot summary or interpretive summary of a text, rather than an argument about a text.

Or: Work that relies heavily upon opinion rather than reason and argument.

D and below: Work that is below average and deficient in one or more of the criteria listed. Such work comes very short of what it ought to be in grappling with serious ideas.

Or: Work that has serious problems with its thesis, structure, evidence, analysis, use of sources, or style.

Or: Work that does not address the expectations of the assignment.

A note about grading in the Harvard College Writing Program: Because every first-year student takes Expos 20, every Preceptor uses similar grading standards to ensure evenness and fairness in their evaluations of student work across various sections. The shared standards described here are drawn from those devised by Head Preceptors Maxine Rodburg, Pat Kain, and Eric LeMay.