NOTES
Feedback
This
criteria sheet doubles as a feedback sheet. Your essay will be returned
to you with a completed copy of this sheet attached to it.
Abbreviations
used in marginal comments
The
marginal comments on your essay may contain any of the following
abbreviations. Look up these sources for a more detailed comment
on the particular point in question.
The criteria
Principal
texts: To fulfill this criterion, you must show some familiarity
with the set texts we have been working with in class. I'm looking
for evidence that you've been reading them carefully and thinking
of their implications. This criterion is both the most elementary
of them all (it shows you've read the set texts) and a summation
of the combined effect of all the others.
Analysis:
Do more with these texts than describe them: tell me something about
how they work, what their effects are, and how they produce those
effects. Careful and close reading of the texts can be revelatory,
and show all sorts of unexpected things.
Argument:
This is the next stage up: what you get when you connect your observations,
insights and analyses. On the small-scale level, your sentences
and paragraphs should follow on from one another, rather than repeat
the same information or pile it together without apparent connections.
On the larger scale, the whole essay should clearly have a direction
to it, with later material building on the earlier. Your argument
should draw on your analyses, framing them and giving them direction.
Style and
expression: Clarity is all important, as are grammar, syntax,
and your ability to write in the genre of the academic essay. In
marking the essays, I shall be assuming you are thoroughly familiar
with the ENGL2035 essay Key, which, among
other things, has comments on and guidance to a number of the most
frequent stylistic problems encountered in essays in this course.
The EMSAH Grammar
and Punctuation Guide may also be useful as a reference.
Use of critical
reading: This criterion is asking you to do some further reading
in literary criticism which is appropriate to your topic, and use
it in your essay. "Critical reading" means two things
here:
- First of
all, it means that you are expected to read more than the set
texts and the critical materials that come with them in those
editions.
- Secondly,
it means that you are expected to draw on scholarly and refereed
material. If you're not sure what that means, you should see
the ENGL2035 Guide to Further Reading,
where it's explained. Nonrefereed material may be very useful,
and you're welcome to use it fairly in getting your essay together,
but it will not satisfy this criterion.
This is not
a request for a long bibliography: it's asking for a small amount
of critical reading done well. The request that you use it in a
way which is integral to your argument (see above, in the grade
of 4) means that you will not satisfy this criterion by just citing
definitions of terms or paraphrases of the text, just to show you've
read something. The critical reading you draw on should be taken
up in your analysis and your argument. Again, the ENGL2035 Guide
to Further Reading should be useful here.
Documentation:
This criterion occurs only in the grade of 4, because it's a basic
skill which should be taken for granted in advanced undergraduate
courses like this one, but there are three ticks available for it,
to emphasize its importance. This means that (a) it's not
hard to get them (all you do is follow the Style Sheet), but (b)
not getting them right will probably make a noticeable dent in the
grade the essay gets once the ticks are added up. You get a tick
in these boxes only if you get the Style Sheet conventions correct.
A good attempt which still isn't quite there can get a half-mark,
while something which is just inaccurate gets no tick.
Each of these
criteria can have flow-on effects on the others. A thorough and
inventive analysis may have all sorts of implications for the argument
you make. A good use of sources will suggest aspects for analysis
or points to explore in your argument. A clear style can show your
abilities to analyse and construct an argument in their best light.
All of these are directly aspects of your take on the topic, and
come from your knowledge of the principal texts.
|
