SSH 205: Grade Breakdown for Midterm Essay
Introduction:
Does the introduction funnel from a general topic to providing necessary background to the thesis?
Does the introduction or thesis include the author’s name and title of the piece you are discussing in your paper?
Does the introduction contain a three story thesis including a topic or representative example, an argument about the topic and a statement of significance?
Do the body paragraphs contain strong topic sentences that introduce a new claim/aspect of the argument and relate back to (support, develop, evolve) the thesis?
Do the body paragraphs contain a clear transition that shows its relationship to the paragraph that comes before it?
Do the body paragraphs (supporting arguments) develop your topic/representative example?
Do the body paragraphs (supporting arguments) prove the argument in your thesis and develop the significance of your argument?
Do the body paragraphs provide textual support (evidence) for their claims AND explain how the evidence supports the claims?
Does the conclusion avoid summarizing the arguments in the paper?
Does the conclusion return to the controversy defined in the introduction in order to develop the implications of the essay?
Does your paper adhere to proper APA or MLA style format and citation (see Purdue OWL website)?
Does your paper contain spelling, grammatical errors or awkward sentence structure?
Do you avoid personalizing statements (“I” or “You” statements) throughout the paper AND do you avoid generalizing language such as “society” or “today” or “throughout history” AND do you avoid informal language (“&” or “etc” or “1” or “isn’t”)?
