ENGL2035 (Modernism) - short assignment: criteria

ENGL2035: Modernism
Short assignment: criteria

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Assessment

Short assignment

Key

Using critical reading

Fair usage and plagiarism

Criteria

Date notified:	week 2 (in your usual tutorial time)
Date due:	week 4 (in your usual tutorial time)
Length:	800 words
Weighting:	15%

Prime criterion: To qualify for a pass, the essay must:

document all the material it uses (see the Guides to Fair Usage and Plagiarism, and Critical Reading)

Other criteria:

You have clearly satisfied these criteria.

These criteria have not been fully satisfied: more attention is needed here.

For a grade of 4, you must satisfy at least two of these criteria:

Principal text:
demonstrates a clear basic familiarity with the passage and its immediate context: a knowledge of what it's describing

Analysis:
demonstrates this familiarity in a connected analysis of the passage: an ability to examine how it achieves its effects

Argument:
assignment is generally logically ordered and clearly structured

Style and expression:
style is clear, and in standard academic register

For a grade of 5, you must generally satisfy the criteria above, plus these:

Principal text:
clear and perceptive understanding of the aspects of the passage on which you focus

Analysis:
develops a clear and cogent analysis of the texts

Argument:
shows clear plan and logical development throughout

Style and expression:
clearly and accurately expressed, with an ability to use a variety of sentence structures clearly and appropriately

For a grade of 6, you must generally satisfy the criteria above, plus these:

Principal text:
demonstrates understanding of the complexities and issues raised in the passage

Analysis:
analysis is detailed, accurate and clear-sighted

Argument:
clear overall sense of direction and accumulation

Style and expression:
thoroughgoing competence in writing skills

For a grade of 7, you must generally satisfy the criteria above, plus these:

Principal text:
a sophisticated and inventive reading of the passage

Analysis:
detailed, accurate, and highly perceptive

Argument:
sophisticated skills in argumentation

Style and expression:
sophisticated skills in writing

Subtotal:

Ticks	16	15	14	13	12	11	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1	0
Grade	7				6				5				4			3	2
Grade	+			-	+			-	+			-	+		-
Mark	100	95	90	85	83	81	78	75	73	71	68	65	60	55	50	45	20

Penalty for late submission (2% per day): ___________%

Documentation:

Failure to use MLA style (see Style Sheet)	2%
Non-standard bibliography (see Style Sheet, section 7)	2%
Non-standard referencing in text (see Style Sheet, sections 3 and 4)	2%

(These penalties are redeemable in the bonus scheme in the research assignment.)

Total adjustment: __________%

TOTAL:

Grade	7			6			5			4			3	2	1
Grade	+		-	+		-	+		-	+		-	3	2	1
Mark	95-100	90-94	85-89	82-84	78-81	75-77	72-74	68-71	65-67	61-64	55-60	50-54	45-49	25-44	0-24

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.

SS	EMSAH Style Sheet, available online. Numbers (e.g. SS 3.1.2) refer to individual numbered sections of the Style Sheet.
Key	Look up the named point in the separate Assignment Key.
Guide	Look up the named point in the separate Guide to critical reading.
Grammar or Punctuation	Look up the named point in the EMSAH Grammar and Punctuation Guide.

The criteria

Principal text: To fulfill this criterion, you must show some familiarity with the set passage, and a knowledge of what's going on in it on the level of narrative and character.

Analysis: Do more with the passage than describe or paraphrase it: tell me something about what its effects are and, above all, how it produces them.

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.

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.

Documentation: As the Assessment sheet suggests, in a second-level course such as this one, you are expected to be thoroughly familiar with scholarly conventions of documentation and referencing. EMSAH uses MLA documentation, as set out in the EMSAH Style Guide. Not using it can result in a loss of percentage points, as set out above. These penalty points are, however, redeemable in the research assignment, as part of a bonus scheme. In other words, get the documentation wrong in the short assignment but right in the research assignment, and you'll claim back points you originally lost.

Short assignment | Research essay Key | Using critical reading | Fair usage and plagiarism

Criteria