Bioethics essays will also be graded according to the following:
A C essay: an essay that meets minimum requirements of competent, adequate
writing for English 101 shows the following features:
1. Interesting or sensible, if somewhat self-evident, content;
2. A discernible central idea or thesis and an adequate sense of both purpose and
audience;
3. A structure that is generally unified around a central idea or thesis, is organized,
and is without serious transitional gaps;
4. Abstractions that are usually balanced by supporting and clarifying detail;
5. Generally clear prose that is not excessively wordy or burdened with cliches and
that uses a variety of sentence structures (this variety should be sufficient to
indicate that the writer is aware of basic options for arranging grammatical
structures-e.g., the use of simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex
sentences);
6. Sentences that are relatively free of errors in such grammatical basics as
subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, verb forms and tenses,
modification, and case;
7. Punctuation, spelling, and other mechanical errors that only occasionally detract
either from the clarity of sentences or the image of a competent, educated writer;
and
8. Diction that is, in general, rhetorically appropriate and accurate.
A B essay: an essay that is above average, shows these features:
1. Content that is interesting and shows some originality in conception and
development;
2. A clear and consistent focus and careful attention to the relationship between a
writer's purpose and methods of accomplishing that purpose with the audience;
3. A purposefully organized and coherent pattern of ideas;
4. Abstractions that are consistently and adequately balanced with supporting and
clarifying details;
5. Prose that is lively, varied, and dependent upon sentences that use complex
grammatical structures to convey relatively fine shades of meaning and rhetorical
sensitivity;
6. Prose that is virtually free of serious grammatical errors (such as those listed in
point five of the description of a C paper);
7. Punctuation that is used purposefully in sentences that are relatively free of
spelling and other mechanical errors; and
8. Diction that is appropriate for the essay's rhetorical situation and is occasionally
felicitous.
An A essay: an excellent essay in English 101 is characterized by the following
features:
1. Insights and ideas that are striking, significant, and illuminating;
2. Vividly sharp focus, masterful command of purpose, and agile strategies to
accomplish that purpose with the audience;
3. A compellingly patterned, seamlessly coherent structure;
4. Abstractions that are substantiated with aptly chosen and deftly integrated
concrete details;
5. Advanced stylistic skills, evidenced in the use of parallel phrases and clauses,
periodic structures, cumulative sentences, and other grammatically complex
forms used effectively for rhetorical goals;
6. Virtually error-free prose;
7. Punctuation that is used rhetorically, for effect as well as clarity; and
8. Diction that is precise, inventive, and felicitous.
A D or F essay shows one or more of the following features:
1. Content that ranges from the barren to the superficial;
2. Focus that is blurred by a failure to establish a central idea or thesis and that has
little recognizable sense of purpose or audience;
3. Structure that wanders aimlessly or has an appearance of form without the
development that makes parts a whole, that suffers from transitional chasms;
4. Abstractions that are strung together without sufficient or appropriate detail to
clarify and defend the assertions;
5. Style that is weakened by convoluted sentences or by monotonously safe
reliance on simple sentences;
6. Flaws in or confusions about elementary grammatical patterns;
7. Repeated failure to make correct distinctions among such marks of punctuation
as periods, commas, and semicolons; or numerous mechanical errors;
8. A failure to use language precisely.
From: Calvin College English Department. Grading Essays in English 101. Posting date not
available.
<www.calvin.edu/academic/engl/101/tresources/grading_essays_in_english_101.htm>.
[Accessed August 25, 2011].