Writing Assessment Criteria
Brown expects students to approach their undergraduate studies as an intellectual process that unfolds over time. Growth in writing is essential to this process. Students are therefore required to demonstrate that they have worked on their writing across the four years.
We offer the following criteria to assess competence and to help guide students as they develop their writing skills.
Highly competent writers
- create coherent and well-developed responses to assignments
- demonstrate a high level of critical and abstract thinking
- demonstrate a sophisticated appreciation for readers’ needs
- support their arguments with relevant, detailed, and convincing evidence
- logically sequence their paragraphs with content-based transitions
- use appropriate diction and tone and constructively vary sentence structures
- use correct grammar, punctuation, spelling, and syntax
Competent writers
- exhibit moderate ability to think critically and abstractly in response to assignments
- clearly attempt to address intended readers’ needs
- sufficiently organize and develop their ideas so as not to impair the readers’ understanding
- use loosely- or unclearly-related examples
- sometimes use weak transitions between paragraphs
- depend upon basic sentence structures, phrasing, and usage
- occasionally use incorrect grammar, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, but not to the point where errors impair the reader’s understanding of the text
Writers whose work falls below the level of competence typically
- exhibit little or no ability to think critically or abstractly
- fail to recognize the needs of the reader
- fail to answer the questions asked in assignments
- depend upon weak generalizations and undeveloped examples
- fail to write coherent prose
- use imprecise or inappropriate vocabulary
- fail to demonstrate sufficient understanding of grammar, punctuation, and syntax