Evaluation in College Reading and Writing

The instructors of English 122 and English 123 do not grade a paper as a single product, because the course objectives include much more than the ability to hand in a paper. Instead, we examine the body of work that leads up to and includes that written project. We evaluate competency on a continuum running from Novice to Master of first-year writing. What does this mean?

Each major writing project involves a series of activities that, taken together, help you practice and develop an important set of behaviors that give rise to stronger writing performances. At the conclusion of each significant writing project in the course, you will receive an evaluation of your progress towards first-year mastery of the course’s six learning outcomes (see below). You will receive an evaluation report that is a shorter version of the one below. Using a continuum line running from Novice to Master, we will evaluate your work on each learning outcome. In addition, we evaluate your level of engagement with the work of the course (see below).

We don’t assign what you would think of as a traditional grade because we’re most interested in development. Think of yourself as needing to make progress moving from Novice to Master, and you’ll experience growth. This will be very uncomfortable for some of you, particularly at first. We strongly encourage you to embrace the progress model of evaluation by focusing much less on your evaluation at a moment in time and much more on the practices associated with higher levels of mastery. In time, you’ll discover that you’re growing as a college-level reader, thinker, and writer.

Near the end of the term, we will ask you to engage in a self-evaluation of your growth in the course and to provide evidence of that growth in an electronic portfolio of your work. Your instructor’s evaluations should help to inform your evaluation, but the focus at the end of the term will shift a bit because we will want to know what you see in your own work over the term. We will, of course, guide you in this self-evaluation.

English 122 Learning Outcomes (80%)

Students who complete English 122 should be able to

Demonstrate some ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision) – 20%.
Begin to effectively integrate their ideas with those of others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources – 20%.
Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking – 15%.
Demonstrate growth in their ability to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process – 15%.
Reasonably document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA) – 5%.
Control individualized patterns of sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, spelling) – 5%.

English 122 Engagement (20%)

Students in English 122 should be engaged by

Both attending class and being present (paying attention and participating).
Embracing practice and work as keys to learning.
Trying new approaches, taking risks.
Persisting in the face of struggle, challenge, and error.
Seeing mistakes as opportunities for reflection, learning, and growth

English 123 Learning Outcomes (80%)

Students who complete English 122 should be able to

Demonstrate ability to approach writing as a recursive process that requires substantial revision of drafts for content, organization, and clarity (global revision), as well as editing and proofreading (local revision) – 20%.
Effectively integrate their ideas with those of others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources – 20%.
Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading response for inquiry, learning, and thinking – 15%.
Demonstrate their ability to critique their own and others’ work by emphasizing global revision early in the writing process and local revision later in the process – 15%.
Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA) – 5%.
Control individualized patterns of sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, spelling) – 5%.

English 123 Engagement (20%)

Students in English 123 should be engaged by

Attending class, focusing on class tasks, and participating actively in small group and class discussion
Creating a single-tasking work environment outside of class
Completing assigned activities, even when they might be difficult or time consuming
- Out of class time on tasks is within 90% of recommended time
- Out of class effort produces clear questions to ask or areas of difficulties to present in class
- Out of class effort produces work products within 90% of the recommended word-count
Trying different approaches to reading, writing, and discussion
Using reflection to explore ways to improve and grow