Essay Evaluation Made Easy

"Nick, what's wrong?" I asked as I barrelled into his room.

"My hand!" he wailed, "it hurts!"

"Did you smash it on something?"

"No. It's just that I'm trying to help my students apply the writing traits in their essay, and during my essay evaluation I saw the need to write comments relating to the writing traits. I just want the pain to go away! Ohhhhhhhh! My hand!"

"So, let me get this straight. You're trying to evaluate essays using the writing traits, but your hand is tired and sore from writing too many comments, and you've reached a point where you'd rather drink goat slobber than write another one."

Nick looked up, hope in his eyes: "That's exactly how I feel."

"Well," I said, "I just happen to have an essay evaluation system that works. It involves a student writing checklist."

At the beginning of the school year or before passing back essays, hand out a list of prefabricated comments with a number next to it. When grading essays, write numbers instead of comments. When students get their essays back, they look at the number on the essay and its corresponding comment on the handout. You can use the numbers for holistic evaluation or for specific parts of the essay. This system works for formal essays, informal writing, timed writing, and test writing. You can make up your own comments or you can steal mine. The best thing about passing out the comments before the essay is due is that it becomes a student writing checklist.

Ideas/Development

1. Too much summary and not enough analysis.
2. Shallow commentary.
3. Facts do not support your main topic.
4. You have no facts to support this.
5. How does this support your thesis statement/topic sentence?
6. Good idea.
7. Excellent development.
8. Good use of citations.
9. Excellent commentary.
10. I agree.
11. I hadn't thought of that.
12. Thesis statement is unclear.
13. Topic sentence is unclear.
14. Show. Don't Tell.

Organization

1. Good formatting.
2. Excellent attention grabber.
3. Good thesis statement.
4. Well organized.
5. Good transition.
6. Unclear.
7. Show how your point supports your thesis statement.
8. You're rambling.
9. This makes little sense.
10. Try rearranging these sentences.
11. Mix in a paragraph every now and then.

Voice

1. Way too passive.
2. Excellent use of the active voice.
3. Use stronger verbs.
4. Too many "to be" verbs.
5. Are you a robot or a person?
6. Way to involve and relate to the reader.
7. Excellent word choice.
8. Use a more specific word.
9. Too many simple sentences.
10. Good sentence variety.

Conventions (you can use proofreading marks for most problems)

1. Proofread more carefully.
2. Mechanically sound.
3. Your poor mechanics interfere with an otherwise good piece of writing.
4. Shoot me now, please (on second thought, leave this one out depending on where you teach).
5. Verb tense disagreement.
6. It's either the past or the present. It can't be both.
7. Pronoun antecedent issues abound.
8. Review apostrophes.
9. Review commas.