Use these rubrics when assessing your students:
Fill out and return one or more GE instructor forms (due with your grades):
Per University policy all GE courses are assessed on a 5-year schedule.
University-Wide Holistic Exam
To monitor and assess the effectiveness of Freshman Composition the Committee establishes topics for a standardized final departmental essay. This final essay is graded holistically by a reading committee comprised of all the current Composition instructors.
Some courses are part of an on-going study for options to this final exam, such as using portfolios.
The Department of English reaffirms its commitment to the differential grading scale as defined in the SJSU Catalog (“The Grading System”). Grades issued must represent a full range of student performance: A = excellent; B = above average; C = average; D = below average; F = failure.
Academic Standards for Assessment
The “A” essay will be well organized and well developed, demonstrating a clear understanding and fulfillment of the assignment. It will show the student's ability to use language effectively and to construct sentences distinguished by syntactic complexity and variety. Such essays will be essentially free of grammatical, mechanical, and usage errors.
The “B” essay will demonstrate competence in the same categories as the “A” essay. The chief difference is that the “B” essay will show some slight weakness in one of those categories. It may slight one of the assigned tasks, show less facility of expression, or contain some minor grammatical, mechanical, or usage flaws.
The “C” essay will complete all tasks set by the assignment, but show weaknesses in fundamentals, usually development, with barely enough specific information to illustrate the experience or support generalizations. The sentence construction may be less mature, and the use of language less effective and correct than the “B” essay.
The “D” essay will neglect one of the assigned tasks and be noticeably superficial in its treatment of the assignment that is, too simplistic or too short. The essay may reveal some problems in development, with insufficient specific information to illustrate the experience or support generalizations. It will contain grammatical, mechanical, and/or usage errors that are serious and/or frequent enough to interfere substantially with the writer's ability to communicate.
The “F” essay will demonstrate a striking underdevelopment of ideas and insufficient or unfocused organization. It will contain serious grammatical, mechanical, and usage errors that render some sentences incomprehensible.