Summary Grading Criteria For Students

Summary Grading Criteria (for students)

A Sophisticated summary

• Correctly surmises the thesis and includes all of the major supporting points
• Likely does not mirror the original order of the article
• Contains no misreadings; represents the authors arguments fairly and accurately
• Contains no opinion or information not mentioned in the article
• Uses attributive tags and/or citations consistently and correctly
• Summarizes using own words and adequate paraphrases
• Quotes sparingly but when done, quotes are smoothly integrated
• Smoothly transitions between ideas, differentiating between more important and less important points
• Contains fluid sentence-level prose

B Clear and coherent summary

• Summary contains the thesis and most of the main points
• Contains few, if any, misreadings of article
• Attributive tags and/or citations are used somewhat consistently and correctly
• Quotes may not be integrated but they are explained
• Paraphrases adequately
• Uses competent transitions
• Contains clear and concise sentence-level prose with some lapses

C Competent summary

• Correctly, or nearly correctly, surmises the thesis and some of the main points.
• Summary may place too much emphasis on one main point or focus too much on minor points
• Summary contains some misreadings but these misreadings don’t extend to the thesis of the article
• Summary may too closely follow the organization of the article itself (a blow-by-blow paraphrase is not a successful summary)
• Attributive tags and/or citations are used, but are used inconsistently and/or incorrectly
• Quotes are unexplained and there may be too many quotes
• Paraphrases may come too close to original though much of the original sentence is changed
• Transitions exist but may be inappropriate or confusing
• Sentences are mostly correct (the occasional fragment or run on) but may be awkward

D Inadequate summary

• Misreads purpose/thesis of article; may invent too different a thesis for the article; may read so much into the article that it is somewhat unrecognizable
• Personal opinion may exist throughout
• Fails to use attributive tags and/or citations to indicate the information presented is the author’s and not the student’s
• Quotes are mostly unexplained
• Paraphrases are too close to original
• Transitions may be nonexistent
• Sentences contain many errors and boundary issues though they are readable

F Failing summary

Exam may fail for any number of reasons: the writer responds to the ideas in the article rather than summarizes; the writer grossly misunderstands or misreads the article; the writer copies sentences without quoting or citing; sentences may be impossible to follow

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