English Essay Grading Scale
Hello everyone! This post is to discuss the English Composition grading scale used to score your essays on the exam.
When grading your essay, evaluators will be looking at three aspects of your essay: your use of written language, use of argument and support, and your understanding of concepts.
Each of these areas will be given a score ranging from 1 to 6. Your score for each essay will be an average of the scores for these three areas. Read the following descriptions of items the raters will use to determine the scoring for your essay, and try to keep these in mind as you complete your practice assignments. You should always attempt to write essays that are a 4 or higher.
Use of Written Language:
- Score of 1: Essays that have been given a score of 1 will either not have a response, or the rater will be unable to assign a score due to the content being drastically off-topic or containing topics that do not form a coherent idea.
- Score of 2: Essays that have been given a score of 2 will be unorganized, written in such a way that the reader becomes easily confused, contains many major errors in grammar, syntax, and/or style errors that make it difficult to determine the meaning of the essay.
- Score of 3: Essays that have been given a score of 3 show an attempt at organization, but are still written in such a way that the reader becomes confused. They contain grammatical, syntactic, and mechanical errors, but less than the amount found in an essay scoring a 2.
- Score of 4: Essays that have been given a score of 4 show good organization, an understandable style, and some grammatical, syntactic, and style differences that do not interfere with the meaning of the writing.
- Score of 5: Essays that have been given a score of 5 show a clear organizational style, with very few grammatical, syntactic, or mechanical errors that do not interfere with the meaning of the writing.
- Score of 6: Essays that have been given a score of 6 show clear and creative organizational tendencies, sophisticated styles and vocabulary, and few or no errors.
Use of Argument and Support:
- Score of 1: Essays that have been given a sore of 1 will either not have a response, or will be off-topic, fail to make a coherent statement, or will contain logic that contradict other areas of the essay.
- Score of 2: Essays that have been given a score of 2 will show an attempt at providing facts to support the major arguments of the essay, but these arguments will either be unconvincing or incoherent. The thesis statement will not show a clear position from the author, does not follow the prompt, contains poor language, or does not appear in the appropriate place in the beginning of the essay.
- Score of 3: Essays that have been given a score of 3 will have arguments and supporting facts present, but the logic may be weak or in an unclear order or misleading. The thesis may appear in the appropriate place and make the writer’s opinion fairly clear, but fails to complete address the prompt or uses poor language.
- Score of 4: Essays that have been given a score of 4 will contain arguments and supporting facts that are appropriate and in a logical order. The thesis statement will appear in the appropriate place in the essay, the writer’s opinion will be adequately clear and addresses the prompt, but may use poor language choices.
- Score of 5: Essays that have been given a score of 5 will contain well-chosen arguments and supporting evidence in an appropriate sequence. The thesis statement appears in the appropriate place, makes the opinion of the writer very clear and addresses the prompt thoroughly, but may have some poor language choices.
- Score of 6: Essays that have been given a score of 6 will contain well-chosen facts to support sophisticated and well-sequenced arguments. The thesis statement appears in the appropriate area of the essay, makes the writer’s opinion completely clear, thoroughly and creatively addresses the essay prompt, and uses carefully chosen, appropriate language.
Understanding Concepts:
- Score of 1: Essays that have been given a score of 1 will either not have a response or will show no understanding of the key concepts of the prompt.
- Score of 2: Essays that have been given a score of 2 will show no mention of the key concepts within the thesis statement, show minimum understanding of the key concepts, and does not consistently follow the required key concepts when developing ideas.
- Score of 3: Essays that have been given a score of 3 will show no mention of the key concepts within the thesis statement or will be mentioned in such a way that it is clear they were misunderstood by the author. They key concepts will only be partially developed throughout the essay, and the essay itself will remain unfocused.
- Score of 4: Essays that have been given a score of 4 will have key concepts that are clearly understood and adequately developed.
- Score of 5: Essays that have been given a score of 5 shows clear understanding of the key concepts and insightful development throughout the essay.
- Score of 6: Essays that have been given a score of 6 show clear understanding of the key concepts and complex and sophisticated development of the ideas throughout the essay.
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