Essay Number _______________ Reader Number ___________________
English
112/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 an awareness of multiple perspectives |
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3. Essay has a clear and appropriate thesis/controlling argument |
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4. Essay includes adequate and appropriate support for thesis/controlling argument |
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5. Essay follows MLA guidelines for basic essay formatting |
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6. Essay follows MLA guidelines for in-text quotations,
paraphrases, and citations |
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7. Essay follows MLA guidelines for the works cited
page or bibliography |
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8. 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.