Weekly seminar papers should be 1 page long and respond to a question about assigned reading from the week. The papers will be evaluated using the rubric at the bottom of this document. Please note there is a seminar paper due for the Monday we have off (Week 9) which substantially revises and improves a previous response paper.
Topic: You are free to address any significant topic that is brought up by the week’s assigned reading. Each week we will give a suggested writing topic for those who have “writer’s block” when attempting to respond to the text.
|
redo |
fair |
complete |
good |
excellent |
|
|
engagement with the text |
does not consider ideas in the text |
simply restates the ideas in the text |
demonstrates consideration of ideas in the text and their consequences |
applies ideas in the text to different contexts, including other texts |
seriously considers ideas in the text and subjects those ideas to scrutiny |
|
Completion of reading assignment |
appears to have not read a significant amount of the assignment |
appears to have read part of the reading assignment |
appears to have read most of the reading assignment |
appears to have fully read the reading assignment |
appears to have fully read and understood the assignment |
|
Spelling punctuation and grammar |
Has not used spell check or used it incorrectly. Improper punctuation. Has many errors which make it difficult to understand. |
has errors which make it difficult to understand the writing. uses the incorrect spelling of words (e.g., their they’re) |
has an error which may make a part of the writing assignment difficult to comprehend |
contains errors that do not hinder comprehension |
Contains few minor errors |
|
organization and structure |
does not use paragraphs correctly |
long paragraphs and run on sentences |
has a beginning a middle and an end |
has a clear beginning middle and end as well as transitions |
has well crafted transitions between the beginning middle and end |
|
voice and audience |
mostly informal language |
may drift into informality |
implicit address to audience |
demonstrates consideration of audience |
explicitly addresses another participant in seminar who has done the reading |
|
thesis and scope |
has no thesis, summarizes text |
has multiple, unrelated theses, addresses many topics |
has a thesis but it is not apparent at first reading, topics vaguely related |
has a clear thesis, topic is obvious while reading |
thesis clearly stated, topic is restricted to addressing the thesis |