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Core Curriculum Grading Rubrics for Written Essays
Grading Criteria
The Core faculty is in broad agreement about the relative weight of content and mechanics in the grading of essay assignments. Students should be aware that successful papers demonstrate equal control of both aspects of writing; for instance, a paper whose argument is specific, well supported, and well organized will, nevertheless, earn no higher than a D+ if it also reveals significant weaknesses in matters of grammatical and mechanical correctness.
Likewise, a paper that is mechanically and grammatically correct will earn no higher than a D+ if it reveals significant weaknesses in its argument or its control of the subject matter. In other words, the faculty agrees that sophistication of writing and thinking are bound up with one another and that to exercise one weakly is to hobble the other.
A Papers
An A paper should demonstrate a level of sophistication and proficiency in both content and mechanics well beyond that of the average student. It should be marked not by simple comprehension of the subject matter, but by the ability to penetrate, analyze, and synthesize the material in order to arrive at new and deeper levels of understanding and insight. Moreover, such a paper is not merely grammatically correct, but its vocabulary, its sentence structure, and its paragraphing are marked by a complexity and appropriateness commensurate with the professor's highest expectations for thinking and writing at that particular course level.
B Papers
A B paper demonstrates good control of both content and mechanics. It surpasses the average paper in its attempt to move beyond an obvious, commonplace, or conventional response to an assignment; such a paper, then, reveals insight and imagination grounded in and informed by a consistent and specific use of the assignment's source material. The writing of this paper will be careful, controlled, and, essentially, error free. The more successfully the student establishes and supports a compelling and complex argument, the more sophisticatedly he or she conveys it, in all components of writing, the closer he or she will have come to writing an A paper.
C Papers
A C paper demonstrates, overall, satisfactory control of both content and mechanics. Because a C paper represents the average work of a college student, it is, for some professors, the beginning point or basis from which he or she determines exceptional strengths or chronic weaknesses; in other words, while some students will either move beyond or fall below a C performance, most will and should do average work. Students should, however, keep in mind that the expectations for assignments at the college level are, of course, higher than those at the secondary level, that a paper that might earn an A or B in a high school course will most likely earn a C in a college course. This grade of C reflects competence in the handling and organizing of an argument and in the demonstrated understanding and use of primary and secondary materials. Such a paper will be, for the most part, free of grammatical and mechanical errors. Those errors that do appear in a C paper will be occasional and few, indicative of neither habitual weaknesses nor gross failure to proofread.
D/F Papers
D or F papers reveal fundamental weaknesses in either content or mechanics. In the former case, the essay may demonstrate misunderstanding of the assignment or a failure to grasp relevant concepts; it may lack appropriate textual support or operate at such a level of generality as to be meaningless; it may proceed without logical or coherent development. In the latter case, the essay will be marked by chronic errors in grammatical and mechanical correctness. The professor, then, will distinguish between a student's occasional inattentiveness and his or her apparent failure to comprehend a grammatical principle. For instance, in a 500-word essay one or two errors in agreement may not be cause for alarm, assuming that the student correctly manages that convention elsewhere in the paper, and an error in agreement or a shift in number in the case of certain indefinite pronouns--such as using a plural pronoun when the antecedent is "everybody" or "everyone"--is probably a less serious matter of concern than an error in the case of an antecedent that is more obviously singular or plural--such as using the plural pronoun ("they") for a singular antecedent ("student").
In other words, the professor will not only distinguish between chronic and occasional errors but between fundamental errors and those whose correction demands a relatively high level of literacy, as, for instance, in the case of a student who uses "which" rather than "that" to introduce restrictive clauses. Generally, the professor will ultimately be less concerned with determining a specific number of errors that will result in a paper's failure than with assessing the student's grasp of basic grammatical and mechanical conventions. (Although a paper that exhibits not necessarily habitual errors of a single type but a great number of different errors should indeed fail, in part because the students has not bother to proofread.)
In sum, if the professor suspects a student doesn't quite understand or care about comma usage, or possessive case, or predication, if the professor is consistently slowed or stymied at the sentence level, then he or she will most likely give that student's paper, at best, a D or, more likely, an F.
The faculty in the Core Curriculum program uses Diane Hacker's A Writer's Reference (5th Ed.) as a guide to successful writing and scholarly practices in core courses. Some instructors may, however, recommend writing procedures that differ from those in the handbook. Students are advised to consult with their instructors about such procedures.
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