Gradatorium: Glossary

Grading Criteria Glossary
These grading criteria use either terms that are unique to the Rutgers Writing Program, or general terms that we define in specific ways. This glossary is meant to introduce you to these terms, and to provide contexts for you to connect them to terms you may already be familiar with.

Project and Position
A student's project is what he or she wants to achieve in the paper. A student creates a project by contributing to the conversation raised by the texts read for class, and making connections among them, while answering the assignment question. One of the signs that a paper has a project is the emergence of new or independent ideas that are affiliated with the assignment question, but generated from the writer's unique attempt to answer that question. Doing this successfully requires taking a position on whatever issues are at hand. Students take a position in writing by clearly presenting their own perspectives on the assignment question and the texts. A position is not simply the conclusion students reach in order to answer an assignment question; rather, it’s their unique perspective within the project they create, the perspective that allows them to make connections with the texts they engage, and to distinguish between an author’s idea and their own. Ideally, students should articulate their paper's project and position in the introductory paragraph; however C-level papers often have the work of a project in the body of their paper, but not an articulation of it in the introductory paragraph. We define these unspecified projects as emerging.

The articulation of a paper's project can be thought of as similar to argument; however, we avoid the language of argument because it suggests contention and leads students to a win or lose, prove or disprove mentality. Arguments tend to remain trapped in the texts, as students use one author to prove another author right or wrong. In contrast, the representation of a student's project incorporates a much broader sense of what a paper can and should accomplish. Students may be asked to stake out their position, make an argument, or have a thesis as a way to articulate their paper's project in the introduction. While these terms are not interchangeable, they all share a focus on a writer's ability to define their project's goals, assumptions, and concerns. The paper's organization helps students define and develop their projects. (See more about a paper's organization below.)

Using Quotation and Making Connections
Learning to use quotation accurately and effectively is one of the most important skills in Basic Composition and Basic Composition with Reading. It is the place where a student’s ideas meet the ideas of another author, and so involves every connection made in the process of forming a project and taking a position. A central part of using quotations involves textual integrity. Having integrity in this case means accurately representing what an author has written, even if a student disagrees with him or her; students, for example, who ignore parts of an author's text in making their own claim aren’t practicing integrity, and are actually weakening their own project in the process.

In addition to providing the full context of an author’s quote, having textual integrity also means using correct citation, as described by the instructor, the Writing Program, and the university. The words and ideas of others need to be attributed to them throughout the paper. A student should identify the source of quotations, the source of paraphrased ideas and facts, and author, title, and context of every source text. Using quotations and correct citation is the easiest and best way for student’s to maintain the distinction between their own position and project and an author’s.

Finally, part of using quotation effectively will be discerning when to reference or paraphrase and when to quote. Some textual evidence provides students with examples: this evidence can often be referenced or paraphrased. Some textual evidence provides students with concepts or ideas: this evidence should usually be quoted. Crucial to the concept of using quotations is the idea that students should treat their own ideas as a text at play in the conversation. In this way students engage with the texts through quotation in order to make connections with them. Making connections, or “thinking connectively,” works on two levels: students should connect or relate their own ideas to their textual evidence and also, at times, relate ideas among texts in support of their project. Traditionally, the Writing Program has used the term connection to denote close work with texts through effective use of quotation; the concept of "thinking connectively" extends this idea. Connection is only one form of working with quotation, and working with quotation is only one form of connection, but it is the one we emphasize in 100 and 100R.

Grammar and Sentence-Level Control
Student papers need to employ correct grammar, clear sentence structure and syntax, proper mechanics (like punctuation), and correct spelling. Making these skills appear consistently and naturally in your writing requires a great deal of work, but it needn’t be dull or mind-numbing. We believe that sentence-level skills should be developed alongside improving reading comprehension, interpretative skills, and strong paragraphing, and we believe they are all connected. If you can express yourself clearly at the sentence level, you will have a better chance of expressing yourself clearly at the paragraph and paper levels. It’s mostly a matter of identifying your patterns of error, learning the written codes that will help you correct them, and then practicing on each draft. “Patterns of error” are the mistakes you make consistently because you don’t know they’re mistakes or you haven’t been taught how to correct them. Oftentimes, what seems like a mass of error on a page is simply the same error being made over and over again. With the help of your instructor and becoming familiar with your grammar book, you can identify the pattern of error, and with one concerted effort at correcting that error, you can clean up an entire page of grammar mistakes.

Sentence-level control also involves eliminating typos, misspellings, and submitting clean, proofread work.

Organization
This involves individual paragraph construction and overall paper organization. Often strong papers use the organization of individual paragraphs to develop their project. Students in 100 and 100R may be working at the sentence and paragraph level for most of the semester. As students become more adept at writing consistently coherent and solid paragraphs, they will begin to work on overall organization. This organization comes at several levels: within a paragraph, between paragraphs, and within the paper as a whole. Students should express, explain, and explore a central claim in each paragraph. The paper's paragraphs should connect logically to each other using strong paragraph transitions. In addition, the paragraphs should all work toward developing and supporting a paper's project.

All papers should be formatted with 1 inch margins, use a standard font other than Courier, and have page numbers.

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