Gradatorium: Criteria explained

As you know, College Writing and Research is a course for transfer students, most of whom enter Rutgers University with credit for first-semester composition credit, but who may need to fulfill a second writing requirement and who want to improve their analytical writing skills to prepare them for upper-level writing courses. So 301 developed as a hybrid of two other Writing Program courses: Expository Writing (101) and Research in the Disciplines (201). In the first half of 301, you write two five- or six-page essays that are like those students write in 101. These essays each develop an argument that engages with two or three readings related to your course topic. In the second half of the course, you produce three increasingly more complex drafts of a research project, just as students do in 201. Taking 301 isn't quite like taking two courses at once, however. Your instructor gives you more opportunity for guided revision in your first two papers, and the scope of the research project is scaled back.

Because 301 shares its goals with 101 and 201, it does not have its own set of grading criteria. Instead, instructors know that, for the first two papers, their students are aiming at the 101 grading criteria, and for the final research project, the students are aiming at the 201 grading criteria. For this reason, our site links you to these criteria below.

• Your essay must engage with the readings in ways that demonstrate that you understood the texts and can use them to respond to the assignment.

• You must demonstrate that you can work analytically with the texts and can work towards defining a project for your paper, even if that project is not yet successful on every level.

• You must control sentence-level errors in your writing.

• You must fulfill all the basic requirements defined by the instructor, including paper length, number of sources, and correct citation and responsible use of sources.

• You must demonstrate that you can work analytically with your research texts and can work towards defining a project for your paper, even if that project is not yet successful on every level.

• You must control sentence-level errors in your writing.
  

If you want to read the grading criteria for papers 1 and 2 in 301, go to the 101 Gradatorium.

If you want to read the grading criteria for the final research paper, go to the 201 Gradatorium.

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