Essay Number _______________ Reader Number ___________________
English 111/Assessment
Rubric & Score Sheet
For the following questions, please assign your essay a score from 0-5 using the following criteria:
· 5/excellent (above and beyond typical course expectations)
· 4/very good (exceeds typical course expectations)
· 3/acceptable (average; meets typical course expectations)
· 2/poor (does not meet typical course expectations, but there is evidence of some effort)
· 1/very poor (failing; does not meet typical course expectations)
· n/a (expectations cannot be evaluated using this particular essay; different from 1—assumes that assignment did not ask for these particular skills or components)
Please don’t assign partial scores (like 2½
); to generate quantitative assessment data, its important that everyone
use the same rubric.
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Score |
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1. Essay demonstrates critical thinking[1] |
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2. Essay demonstrates adequate development of subject/issue under consideration |
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3. Essay has a focused theme and/or subject |
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4. Essay includes adequate development of theme or subject |
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4. Essay demonstrates knowledge of grammatical and
syntactical conventions of written English |
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Fundamental Critical Thinking Competencies
Essential critical thinking competence appropriate for university-level work
includes ability to:
--identify
issues of belief, empirical truth, and logic
--evaluate
credibility of sources of information and opinion
--identify
necessary or probable assumptions and presuppositions
--recognize
the difference between normative and non-normative claims
--identify
relevant and irrelevant claims in a given context
--recognize
misleading uses of language
--determine
when additional information is needed for a given purpose
--construct
deductive and inductive arguments
--identify
valid and invalid arguments, including fallacies of deduction and induction
--recognize
logical conflict, compatibility, and equivalence
--critique
and construct analogical arguments and explanations
--understand
and evaluate causal arguments and explanations
--assess
common types of statistical information, generalizations, and reasoning
Both in theory and in practice, these competencies partially overlap each
other. Each item in the list can serve as a worthwhile focus of instruction and
merits appropriately designed assessment. It is reasonable to expect that just
as these items lend themselves to different modes of instruction that
contribute in their particular ways to a student's general education, so also different
modes of assessment will return various kinds of usable information. Rigid
reliance on any single mode of instruction risks an adverse effect on ability
to construe novel situations, and narrowly focused assessment strategies risk
skewing the inductive inferences that constitute assessment proper.
This handout is an excerpt from California State-Chico’s
Critical Thinking Assessment Project, where you can find more detailed
description and information.