EVALUATION CRITERIA OF ESSAY IN CSS EXAM: A. CONTENT: 1. Logic: Logic refers to clear thinking, ordered thoughts, and precise arguments. You should have an arguable claim backed up by good reasons that support it. Hasty generalizations, poor causal reasoning, non sequitars, slippery slopes, straw mans, and other fallacies should be avoided as you make your argument. 2. Evidence: Evidence refers to the support you give your argument. This support could be in the form of facts, statistics, authoritative quotations, surveys, studies, or other types of evidence. Good evidence involves more than just finding quotations to agree with your position. It expounds the reasoning behind these authoritative statements and offers factual data for your position. 3. Development: Development refers to the degree of depth you give a topic. If your thesis takes a specific, narrow claim and expands at length that idea with insights, evidence, and commentary, then you are said to be developing the idea. On the other hand, if you merely state a position and give superficial reasons for it, and then move on to another idea, your ideas will not developed. B. ORGANIZATION 1. Focus: Your overall essay should have a clear, specific focus as stated in the thesis. Additionally, each paragraph should be focused on supporting that thesis. Overall, your focus on the topic should be sufficiently narrow such that it allows you to explore in depth a specific idea. Your essay should not cover so much ground that your treatment ends up broad and shallow. 2. Structure: Structure refers to the way you organize your thoughts about the topic you are writing about. A well-structured essay presents your ideas in clear, distinct paragraphs with topic sentences that guide the reader. Your insights and explanations should be logically divided and presented in some progressive or sequential order that makes sense for the topic. 3. Unity: Unity involves remaining focused in each paragraph on a single main idea. Additionally, unity implies that each paragraph supports the thesis in a relevant way. Paragraphs with multiple main ideas or essays with extraneous or irrelevant paragraphs break the principle of unity. C. SOURCE INTEGRATION 1. Integration: Integration is the art of smoothly incorporating paraphrases, direct quotations, and mixed quotations into your essay. Good integration doesnt have too many quotes from the same author, nor too few sources for the evidence required. Signal phrases are used when necessary, and quotations are integrated in a way that preserves the grammatical flow of your own sentences. 2. In-text citation: In-text citation refers to the proper parenthetical citations and signal phrases used in the body of your text as you quote or paraphrase. In-text citations should accurately reflect MLA style in the way they supply source information, page numbers, or authors names. Additionally, each author cited in the body of your essay should appear on the Works Cited page. 3. Works Cited: The Works Cited page should follow MLA style and accurately reflect the sources used in your paper. Each entry must be in correct format, as well as the page itself. Additionally, the sources used should be reliable, credible sources offering good evidence for your position. (Note: A bibliography differs from a Works Cited page in that a bibliography lists all works consulted rather than all works cited.) D. LANGUAGE: 1. Grammar: The grammar in your sentences should be correct. In particular, commas, semi-colons, capitalizations, possessives, and periods should be used correctly. Additionally, your sentences should be free of subject-verb agreement errors, tense shifts, misspellings, misplaced modifiers, fragments, run-ons, and all awkwardness. 2. Clarity: Clarity in writing involves constructing sentences, paragraphs, and arguments in ways easily understood by those reading your essay. If a reader has to reread your sentence, guess at the intended meaning, or struggle to follow your basic argument, your writing is unclear and needs to be recast with more precision. 3. Style: Style refers to the way you say something, rather than what you say. The style adopted for an academic essay should be formal but readable. The tone should be objective and scholarly, and the sentences should have varied structures and lengths. Your style is like the literary fingerprint of your writing -- it is what identifies your voice.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 06:22:27 +0000
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