PAPER GRADING STANDARDS

     Grades on papers may sometimes strike their authors as arbitrary, but in fact there is a widely accepted "gold standard" within the academic community.  What we look for in a paper includes the following: an interesting, well-defended thesis; an organizational structure that makes one point lead coherently into the next; a good balance between citations from the text and the author's own analysis; and--not least importantlyÑa harmonious writing style, with varied sentence structures and skillfully chosen words that express the idea with precision.  The following guidelines will give you some idea of the qualities that make a paper fall into one grade range or another.  Parroting the professor's interpretation, as you can see, is not a guarantee of a high grade.  An A-range paper from an advanced student may be more sophisticated in its thinking than one from a freshman, but the basic principles remain the same.

A PAPER IN THE "A" RANGE:

     -    Makes rich, insightful points that go beyond the basic requirements of the assignment, showing     inititative and original thought

     -    Has an interesting, clearly stated thesis, backed up by solid, well-chosen evidence in the form ofquotations from the text

     -    Is extremely well organized, with meaningful paragraphs and helpful transitions between them

     -    Avoids vague abstractions or irrelevant universal statements, uses precise and expressive words, does not repeat itself needlessly

     -    Has few, if any, mechanical errors

A PAPER IN THE "B" RANGE:

     -    Has a good thesis with enough evidence to make it convincing, although it may not be developed ascompletely as the reader might wish

     -    Is well organized, with  few (if any) underdeveloped paragraphs or thoughts left hanging

     -    Is basically well written (precise, concise, not too vague) but suffers from occasional bad transitions, ideas,out of sequence, awkward constructions, redundancies, or trite statements

     -    Relies excessively on points that were made in class

A PAPER IN THE "C" RANGE:

     -    Has a thesis that is overly predictable or very difficult to support

     -    Shows a basic sense of organization, but leaves important ideas underdeveloped or includes peripheral points whose relevance is not made clear

     -    Is difficult to follow in places; has awkward transitions between ideas

     -    Throws together quotations from the text without explaining why they are meaningful

     -    Contains many instances where word choice is inappropriate and/or sloppy grammatical and mechanical errors

A PAPER IN THE "D" RANGE:

     -    Has no apparent thesis

     -    Does not support its claims with appropriate evidence

     -    Displays little sense of overall structure or unity; contains random statements with insufficient analysislinking them

     -    Makes claims that defy basic rules of logic

     -    Contains many serious grammatical or usage errors

     -    Plagiarizes (automatic "F")