Scoring Scheme for Evaluating ESL Compositions
by Thomas Anerine
Content:
21-25 = Content appropriate to assignment - interesting - well informed, substantive - thesis is thoroughly developed with supporting details and information.
17-20 = Has some knowledge of subject - ideas are not developed enough - may be some unsupported facts or not enough detail.
12-16 = Not knowledgeable of subject - careless about topic, does not provide facts or examples - not informative - little substance.
0-11 = Irrelevant to assignment - makes no significant contributions in content.
Organization:
21-25 = Includes necessary elements of structure ( such as introduction, body, conclusion) – topic sentences are clear – ideas are supported - logical development – cohesive.
18-20 = Main ideas are clear but may not be well organized – minor errors in sequencing of ideas or information. Good attempt to follow structural patterns.
14-17 = Inadequate development of structural patterns ( topic sentences, paragraph structure). Lacks logical sequencing and development.
11-13 = No organization – ideas are disconnected – hard to follow.
Style / Rhetoric:
23-25 = Cohesive – ideas are connected – has good transitions – shows awareness of audience – has language and tone appropriate to assignment – has sentence variation.
18-22 = Clear – shows less sentence variation – may have choppy transitions. Trouble with adopting register appropriate to the assignment.
14-17 = May be repetitious – little or no attempt at complex sentence construction - choppy and incohesive.
11-13 = No sentence variation – poor use of connectors and transitions - major syntactic errors—no cohesion.
Grammar / Vocabulary:
23-25 = Uses complex construction and has no major syntactic errors - few errors of agreement, tense, number, articles, pronouns, prepositions, word order - few errors with irregular verbs - good word choice.
18-22 = May have minor problems in complex constructions – many errors in agreements, tense, number, articles, pronouns, prepositions, word order, and irregular verbs - few errors of word choice.
12-17 = Basic problems with sentence construction - may have errors such as sentence fragments, run-on sentences - uses only simple constructions - moderate errors in word choice.
0-11 = Grammatical problems make communication extremely difficult or limited - shows no mastery of sentence construction rules.