Writing Process Grading Sheet

WRITING PROCESS GRADING SHEET

1) 40 points: Drafts. Student must have a minimum of four drafts (and the final essay, which makes 5 papers in total) that show revision from one to the next, the fourth draft being the sentence level draft. A draft is not brainstorming or freewriting, but an essay written out, typed, etc., and meeting the length requirements for that draft. Drafts show change, idea development, reorganization, expansion/contraction, and experimentation. Draft material must be turned in to receive a grade for any essay. You will be printing out drafts as we go, so you will need to keep these organized. The more writing on them the better!

2) 20 points: Idea complexity and originality. As stated in class, this area is the biggest challenge in college writing. Recall that your audience is college educated adults, university professors, and working professionals. Good ideas take time and hard work. 

3) 10 points: Sentence level draft, draft 4. This draft shows extensive sentence revision (15 sentence level changes per page), which means that numerous sentences have been rewritten in a meaningful way: revised word choice/diction, wordiness reduced, punctuation changed, sentences combined, sentence complexity and variety, etc. Notes and rewriting of sentences must be handwritten on the hardcopy of draft 4. The typed sentence changes will be made for the final essay.

4) 10 points: Self-Evaluation. Rubric areas rated and a two page, typed (700 words), MLA formatted (12 pt. font Times New Roman, double-spaced) analysis of each area explaining the scoring. The scores you give yourself do not determine your grade. The goal is to determine where you are currently at and what areas you need to concentrate on in order to develop your writing further. Include word count at the end of your self-evaluation.

5) 10 points: Correctness/Proofreading. Essay has few if any sentence errors or typos.

6) 10 points: MLA formatting, 12 pt. font, Times New Roman, word count on last page. Having nothing cited in your paper will result in no credit for the essay, as will not submitting your final essay to turnitin.com.

Drafts Description

Draft 1: This draft is written after various brainstorming activities have been done. It is an exploration of the essay topic, and the writer is mainly concerned with just getting ideas down and writing several pages.

Draft 2: Further development of ideas and some work on organization and unity, and starting work toward an interesting, original, and engaging thesis. However, remember that your thesis should evolve as you write the various drafts.

Draft 3: The writer looks closely at organization, revises the introduction (and thesis) and conclusion, and transitions from one idea (paragraph) to the next. This draft is where the logic of the essay should be closely analyzed. Why are the ideas presented in the order they are in? How does each idea develop the thesis? Writer should also do a solid proofreading as this draft will be used for peer review. Since others will be reading this, the writer needs to have it as developed as she can prior to peer review. (Don’t waste your readers!)

Draft 4: This draft has been revised in response to the peer review, feedback from the instructor, and additional analysis on the writer’s part. A printed out copy of this draft will be used for sentence level revision. All sentence revision must be written on the hard copy of the essay. We often have a draft 4.5 that is a peer editing draft.

Draft 5: This is the Final Essay. The sentence revision from draft 4 has been applied to this draft. It also meets all formatting and proofreading requirements.

*Final essays must be submitted to Turnitin.com or the student will receive no credit for that essay.