The 301 Research Paper: Criteria for Instructors

Reasons Why a Research Essay Might Not Pass

• The writer fails to meet one or more of the basic requirements, including paper length and number of sources.

• The writer fails to engage with the sources. The paper may depend on uncritical personal response, avoid dealing with the texts, or generalize about them.

• The paper reveals weak reading comprehension. The writer may fail to grasp the meaning of key terms or the outline of a text’s argument.

• The paper may summarize texts without defining the writer’s own position, argument, or project. If the paper has an argument, it may be largely unsubstantiated or unsupportable.

• The essay reveals the student’s inability to select and use appropriate quotations from the sources.

• The student has done insufficient research. The student may not have been able to find research sources independently, or the sources have not been read closely. Even if the student cites the minimum number of sources, he or she may draw primarily from one or two texts. Most of the sources may be popular or journalistic.

• The paper contains significant citation problems, such as plagiarism or errors that border on plagiarism.

• The paper contains frequent sentence-level errors that impede meaning.

C Range

• C research papers fulfill all the basic requirements defined by the instructor, including paper length, number of sources, and correct citation of sources.

• A C research paper may contain a substantial amount of summary, but the summary indicates comprehension of key terms and arguments.

• While much of the essay may be a report, the student attempts to build connections between texts that point toward a project. A C paper may begin to use a concept or debate from one text to analyze material from another text or texts, but many of the connections may be simply additive.

• The paper’s claims are generally reasonable and supportable, although they may not cohere in an argument. Many claims, but not necessarily all of them, are supported by the sources.

• The C essay may rely heavily on only a few sources. Many of the sources may be texts from the class, but the student must have found at least two sources independently.

• In a C paper, some of the sources and quotations selected are suitable to the paper, but not all of them.

• In a passing essay there are generally coherent relationships between paragraphs. Transitions may be additive rather than analytical, and the paper may not develop a larger organizational structure.

• A C essay may contain some sentence-level error. Although two or three patterns of error may remain, the errors are not present on every page and rarely impede meaning.

C+ Range In one or more substantial ways, a C+ essay is more complex than a C essay:

• It may use more complicated texts.

• It may involve more comprehensive research.

• It may contain less summary and demonstrate more effort at developing an analysis or argument.

B Range

• The B research paper uses sources more complexly than a C paper. A B writer, for instance, might locate points of disagreement as well as agreement among the sources, or might apply and sustain the connection between the analytic framework and material from several sources.

• A B essay demonstrates a broader understanding of some of the central issues, rather than simply reporting on the facts.

• In a B essay the writer shows that he or she is engaged in the debate or conversation about the paper’s topic and recognizes that he or she is a part of that larger conversation. In at least a few key moments, the author’s position is more analytic than reactive.

• In a B essay, relationships between paragraphs are usually coherent, and the essay has a clear organizational structure, although there may be moments where connections between ideas have not been completely worked out.

• A B essay demonstrates the student’s ability to quote from key passages and to work with the quotations to develop a connection or claim.

• A B paper contains few sentence-level or citation errors.

B+ Range

• A B+ paper is more complex and/or has more depth than the B paper in one or two substantial ways. The writer may work with more difficult texts or do more comprehensive research, or, the writer may develop one or more elements of the paper’s argument particularly well.

• A B+ research project is highly proficient, but lacks the ambition and scope of the A project.

• The B+ paper may have the ambition and scope of an A paper, but it is one draft away in terms of coherence, control, and/or error.

A Range

• The project may be particularly ambitious and well-argued. The writer may have pursued a sophisticated project or articulated one or two outstanding moments of analysis.

• The writer may have chosen difficult sources or brought more than the required number of texts together in a successful argument.

• The writer demonstrates complex understanding of the topic, sources, and issues raised. He or she communicates a strong sense of position in relation to the issues. The writer might complicate the positions taken by the source texts, or show how his or her own position is complicated by the sources.

• The writer chooses quotations well and engages with those quotations.

• The paper is well-organized and controlled, with few citation and sentence-level errors.