Your portfolio will be evaluated holistically based on the following criteria:
Writing with a clear purpose
Effectively utilizing source material
Organization
Click on the drop-down menus below for more details on each evaluative criteria
Writing with a clear purpose involves having a sustained focus on a position, argument, or inquiry. Your position, argument, or inquiry are determined by what you think, usually in response to a prompt or assignment.
A proficient essay clearly states its focus and maintains that focus throughout the entire essay.
A proficient essay presents a methodical, connected discussion.
Effectively utilizing source material involves carefully selecting, integrating, and explaining source material and meaningfully applying that material in service of an essay’s purpose. Effective use of sources means moving beyond summarizing the ideas in texts and towards meaningful engagement with those ideas.
A proficient essay engages in conversation with sources by connecting the sources' ideas to your essay's purpose and argument.
A proficient essay relates the source's ideas and materials to your own ideas and makes that relevance explicit.
A proficient essay explains and contextualizes ideas from sources, possibly by briefly reviewing the source's argument, putting their ideas into your own words, or illustrating them with fresh examples.
Organization guides the audience from paragraph to paragraph with effective transitions and which connects sentences to form coherent paragraphs. Organization indicates awareness of your reader’s need to be guided through the flow of your ideas.
In a proficient essay, each paragraph signals a new idea and how that new idea is explicitly related to the previous paragraph and the overall purpose of the essay.
In a proficient essay, sentences use forms that express meaning to the reader, and each sentence has a meaningful connection to the other sentences in the paragraph.