Getting an A on an English Paper
Jack Lynch,
Rutgers University – Newark
Grades
This is a guide about getting an A. Here's what that
means in my classes. (For those with other professors, your
mileage may vary.)
Here are the categories I use when I assign grades:
- A
- Only the best papers earn an A: they do everything
that a B paper does (see below), and they go beyond that
by catching my attention. A papers not only do nothing
wrong; they're engaging and say something interesting.
They're well organized and well written, not only avoiding
mistakes but showing real elegance and grace. Most of all,
they're daring or unexpected: they teach me something new, or
show me something about a text I hadn't seen before.
- B
- A B paper makes no major errors. It has a clear thesis; it develops it well, with plenty
of insightful close reading; it's well written, and not marred by any serious
mechanical problems.
- C
- A paper will earn some kind of C if it's lacking one
or more of the essential ingredients for a B. The most
common problem is a bad thesis
— that does in more papers than every other problem
combined. But others have reasonable theses but are weak on close readings. Style and mechanics alone rarely doom a paper to
C-dom, but someone with poor writing skills who can't get
a point across might end up with a C for that reason.
- D
- I don't give many D's. Only those with more than one
serious problem deserve that sort of treatment. A paper
with no recognizable thesis, with only
a superficial grasp of the text, and really poor expression, for
instance — that's D territory. If you're earning
D's in my classes, you should certainly talk to me, and
maybe to the Writing Center; it means you need to do a lot of
work.
- F
- Here's my bargain: I won't fail any paper that shows honest
effort. That means F's are reserved for papers that show
no effort (if it was dashed off two hours before it was
due, for instance), and for those that aren't honest. Plagiarism will always earn you an
F not only for the paper but for the course, and might
even result in disciplinary action like suspension or expulsion:
it's serious stuff.
It's frustrating to have to shoehorn papers into the small number
of categories available to me: at Rutgers, I have to choose among
A, B+, B, C+, C, D, and F. I'm therefore fond of pluses,
minuses, and various combinations — A-/B+, that sort of
thing — to show which way a paper is leaning. A paper that
starts with a reasonable thesis, for
instance, but that doesn't use evidence well enough to make a
convincing argument, might earn a B-minus. All these
niceties are lost when I submit a final grade, but I try to be as
clear as possible.
As I said, these are my guidelines. Students are sometimes
convinced that grades are assigned almost randomly: Professor A
gives an A- and Professor B gives a C+ to the same paper. But in
fact the variability in grading isn't what it seems. Most wide
divergences in grades result from a paper that does some things
very well and others very badly — Professor A might think
the close reading is perceptive enough
to make up for the weak thesis, while
Professor B thinks the vague thesis dooms the paper to a lower
grade, however insightful the readings. Or it might be use of
evidence versus mechanical mistakes, or whatever. And
sometimes it depends on what sort of class you're in: English
Composition 101 might expect something different from Advanced
Readings in Postmodern American Authors. But most professors will
agree within, say, half a grade on a paper that's consistently
good or bad.
For other takes on what goes into grading an English paper, check
out the page on Grading
Standards on Penn's TeachWeb, including those by my pal Erik
Simpson, and the superb "Papers:
Expectations, Guidelines, Advice, and Grading" by Jeannine
DeLombard and Dan White.
A few other guides to grading standards:
from Jack Lynch's guide,
Getting an A on an English
Paper
