Ranking Essays

Using an essay rubric handed out during class, I ranked three sample essays today as I read the thesis, structure, evidence, analysis, and style of the essays. For the first essay, the thesis is very straightforward and understandable. Throughout the entire essay, the writer maintains a strong, logical structure with counterarguments sided along each other and smooth transitions between analyses and evidence. As a reader, I was able to read through the essay very easily thanks to its clear,smooth style of writing and the clear connections made between the analyses of evidence and the thesis. Using the rubric, I'd rank this essay as an A.
     For the second essay, the contents in the introduction was vague; the sentences before the thesis seem to be a longer re-phrase of the thesis with little detail and structured as a list. In the analyses, the writer makes some connections to the thesis, yet restate the thesis in counterarguments rather than going into deeper analysis.This essay receives a B.
      For the third essay, the writer includes mostly in his introduction an opposing technique writers generally do (" a formal introduction of characters"), and therefore puts less focus on his position. I immediately noticed grammatical errors that make the writer's ideas vague and generally difficult to communicate to the reader, too. As for the evidence, the writer introduced few examples throughout his essay. For the first body paragraphs, the writer analyzes portions of the novel without specific evidence. In some cases, the writer makes weak connections to the thesis or none at all (the ideas presented in the second body paragraph do not seem to connect to the thesis). Overall, I'd rank this essay as a C.