Essay Rubrics: Additional Questions to Ask Yourself as You Write Your Essay

Teachers use a combination of their assignment criteria and a rubric in order to grade you. Part of doing an assignment should always be analyzing the elements on this rubric. 

A rubric accomplishes two things: it reminds a student of the basic writing principles necessary to achieve strong writing, and it provides information about a teacher’s specific essay requirements. If something seems ambiguously written on the sheet, the rubric will help a student be more certain about what a teacher is expecting. 

Regarding principles of strong essay writing: 

Consider the rubric from the link below (I’ve copy and pasted the level 4 criteria as quotes below)  

https://www.readwritethink.org/sites/default/files/Essay%20Rubric.pdf and let’s consider the five elements of good writing presented here: focus and detail, organization, voice, word choice, sentence structure/grammar/mechanics and spelling. 

Focus and Detail: “There is one clear, wellfocused topic. Main ideas are clear and are well supported by detailed and accurate information.” The teacher wants to see that everything you’re doing is in service of a purpose. Every paragraph should help the audience (the teacher) arrive at the purpose. So, as you write, ask yourself, “does what I’m writing help me achieve the purpose of what I’m trying to express in my essay?”

Organization: “The introduction is inviting, states the main topic, and provides an overview of the paper. Information is relevant and presented in a logical order. The conclusion is strong.” Good writing means reducing a reader’s confusion. An essay is like a story, one point follows logically from another, the story should draw the reader in, and engage them, good organization does that. As you write your essay, ask yourself, “is the reader going to follow what I’m saying? Will they become confused? Will they be drawn in and engaged in what I’m writing?”

Voice: “The author’s purpose of writing is very clear, and there is strong evidence of attention to audience. The author’s extensive knowledge and/or experience with the topic is/are evident.” This rubric criteria is a smattering of things. It mentions purposeful writing (which has already been covered), audience focus, and experience and knowledge. Basically, nobody wants to read the work of an author who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Would you want to read an internet article by someone who isn’t an expert or knowledgeable in the field? When you write, ask yourself, am I an expert here? Am I showing that I have confidence in my evaluation? Will the reader be convinced by my arguments and examples? On the other hand, audience-focused writing has to do with engagement. If you know who your imagined audience is, it will help you write with them in mind. Are you trying to communicate your point to a 6 year old? Or a 60 year old? Is your audience an expert? Or are they completely unaware of what’s happening? Ask yourself, “who am I writing for?” (it’s not your teacher - that’s your actual audience; who is the IMAGINED audience?) and filter your writing accordingly. 

Word Choice: “The author uses vivid words and phrases. The choice and placement of words seems accurate, natural, and not forced.” Word choice matters in writing. This is part of engagement. Ask yourself as you write, do my word choices sound good or bad to my imagined audience? Do they understand them? Does the word choice serve to get them to engage further or disengage with what I’m writing?

Sentence Structure, Grammar, Mechanics & Spelling: “All sentences are well constructed and have varied structure and length. The author makes no errors in grammar, mechanics, and/or spelling.” This section is 50% of your grade. If you can’t get English fluency right, you will struggle with grades no matter how good everything else in your writing is. A lot of students in high school and post-secondary focus on writing good work and reading comprehension and neglect basic grammar study. After a certain age, schools wash their hands of teaching grammar and sentence structure and simply tank your grades for not having proper English fluency. While ChatGPT and editing tools are great ways to fix this problem immediately, there is value in actually understanding the mechanics of the English language. Ask yourself, “is my English fluent? If not, what can I do to improve it?”

Another popular idea that I believe is that good writing lies mainly in the editing process. And that’s true. You should write a rough draft and then ask yourself lots of questions about how good what you’ve written is. A lot of students create a rough copy of an essay and submit it, glad that they’ve finished an assignment, and then receive a poor grade. Well, you didn’t have to get a poor grade, you just needed to finish your rough draft earlier, and then ask yourself a lot of questions, spend time thinking about the writing. The more you do that, the better your writing (and grades) become.