ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS EXPOSITORY WRITING RUBRIC

SKILL AREA 6 Responses at this level: 5 Responses at this level: 4 Responses at this level: 3 Responses at this level: 2 Responses at this level: 1 Responses at this level:

Meaning: the extent to which the writing exhibits sound understanding, analysis, and explanation, of the writing task and text(s) Development: the extent to which ideas are elaborated using specific and relevant details and/or evidence to support the thesis

convey an accurate and indepth understanding of the topic, audience, and purpose for the writing task offer insightful and thorough analysis and explanation in support of the topic develop ideas clearly and fully, effectively integrating and elaborating on specific textual evidence from a variety of sources effectively discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information and between fact and opinion skillfully establish and maintain consistent focus on a clear and compelling thesis exhibit logical and coherent structure with claims, evidence and interpretations that convincingly support the thesis make skillful use of transition words and phrases are stylistically sophisticated, using language that is precise and engaging, with a notable sense of voice and awareness of audience and purpose effectively incorporate a range of varied sentence patterns to reveal syntactic fluency demonstrate control of the conventions with essentially no errors, even with sophisticated language

convey an accurate and complete understanding of the topic, audience, and purpose for the writing task offer clear and explicit analysis and explanation in support of the topic develop ideas clearly and consistently, incorporating and explaining specific textual evidence from a variety of sources discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information and between fact and opinion effectively establish and maintain consistent focus on a clear thesis exhibit a logical sequence of claims, evidence, and interpretations to support the thesis and effectively used transitions make effective use of transition words and phrases use language that is fluent and original, with evident awareness of audience and purpose incorporate varied sentence patterns that reveal an awareness of different syntactic structures demonstrate control of the conventions, exhibiting occasional errors only when using sophisticated language (e.g., punctuation of complex sentences)

convey an accurate although somewhat basic understanding of the topic, audience, and purpose for the writing task offer partial analysis and explanation in support of the topic develop some ideas more fully than others, using relevant textual evidence from a variety of sources attempt to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information and between fact and opinion

convey a partly accurate understanding of the topic, audience, and purpose of the writing task offer limited analysis or superficial explanation that only partially support the topic develop ideas briefly or partially, using some textual evidence but without much elaboration or from limited sources may contain a mix of relevant and irrelevant information and/or confuse the difference between fact and opinion establish but fail to consistently maintain focus on a basic thesis exhibit a basic structure but lack the coherence of consistent claims, evidence, and interpretations make an inconsistent attempt to use some basic transition words or phrases rely on basic vocabulary, with little awareness of audience or purpose reveal a limited awareness of how to vary sentence patterns and rely on a limited range syntactic structures demonstrate emerging control, exhibiting frequent errors that somewhat hinder comprehension (e.g., agreement of pronouns and antecedents; spelling of basic words)

convey a confused or largely inaccurate understanding of the topic, audience, and purpose for the writing task offer unclear analysis or unwarranted explanations that fail to support the topic attempt to offer some development of ideas, but textual evidence is vague, repetitive, or unjustified contain irrelevant and/or inaccurate information and/or confuse the difference between fact and opinion establish a confused or irrelevant thesis and fail to maintain focus exhibit an attempt to organize ideas into a beginning, middle, and end, but lack coherence make little attempt to use transition words and phrases use language that is imprecise or unsuitable for the audience or purpose reveal a confused understanding of how to write in complete sentences and little or no ability to vary sentence patterns demonstrate lack of control, exhibiting frequent errors that make comprehension difficult (e.g., subject verb agreement; use of slang)

provide no evidence of understanding the writing task or topic make incoherent explanations that do not support the topic

Organization: the extent to which the writing establishes a clear thesis and maintains direction, focus, and coherence

Language: the extent to which the writing reveals an awareness of audience and purpose through word choice and sentence variety

establish and maintain focus on a clear thesis exhibit a logical sequence of claims, evidence, and interpretations but ideas within paragraphs may be inconsistently organized make some attempt to use basic transition words and phrases use appropriate language, with some awareness of audience and purpose make some attempt to include different sentence patterns but with awkward or uneven success demonstrate partial control, exhibiting occasional errors that do not hinder comprehension (e.g., incorrect use of homonyms)

completely lack development and do not include textual evidence contain irrelevant and/or inaccurate information and completely fail to distinguish fact from opinion fail to include a thesis or maintain focus complete lack of organization and coherence make no attempt to use transition words or phrases use language that is incoherent or inappropriate include a preponderance of sentence fragments and run-ons that significantly hinder comprehension illegible or unrecognizable as literate English

Conventions: the extent to which the writing exhibits conventional spelling, punctuation, paragraphing, capitalization, and grammar

2/3/03