Paper grading basis

Grading the Linguistics 1 term paper

It may be of some help to you, as you prepare your paper, to know what we will be looking for. Here are the guidelines that we will be using as we grade your papers. (Guidelines revised 06/01/2006.)

GUIDELINES FOR GRADING
LINGUISTICS 1 COURSE PAPERS

Possible total points: 40

Introduction (6 points)

1 point: basic personal information (where born and raised)
2.5 points: explicit and relevant description of exposure to first language
2.5 points: explicit and relevant description of exposure to second language ("relevant description" means saying something about contexts where language is/was used and the way the language was taught and learned)

Comparison of Sounds (9 points)

4 points: coherence of description (use of articulatory terminology, non-confusion of orthography and pronunciation, internal coherence of description)
AUTOMATIC 3-POINT DEDUCTION FOR THE "CONFUSION OF SOUND AND SPELLING ERROR"
3 points: quality of exemplification (good examples, relevance of examples)
2 points: explicit comparison of the two languages (for example, why a speaker of one might have trouble pronouncing the other)

Comparison of Grammar (9 points)

4 points: coherence of description (use of terminology that we used, such as remarks on word orders, types of morphological marking, internal coherence of description)
3 points: quality of exemplification (data laid out in a clear way, relevance of examples to the grammar points chosen)
2 points: explicit comparison of the two languages

Language and thought (8 points)

4 points: coherence of description (does the kind of example make sense? does it really provide a comparison of differences that could be claimed to CAUSE its speakers to think in a certain way?)
2 points: quality of exemplification (choice of examples, layout of data to facilitate comparison)
2 points: addressing question of "language and thought" (do the student say something questioning the Whorf hypothesis—the concept that a language CAUSES its speakers to take a particular world view? Typically this will be circular reasoning, but the paper must state what circular reasoning is. Other types of arguments are on page 13 of the APS reader.)

Acquisition (8 points)

4 points: choice of topic (does the choice of topic mentioned really get at the notion of how different types of exposure may have affected acquisition and hence differentiation in ability to use the two languages?)
4 points: quality of exemplification (are examples clear and do they truly exemplify the difference in context of acquisition of the two languages?)

Will we read drafts of the paper?

We cannot read full drafts of your papers and comment on them for several reasons:

Time: There are over 350 students in the class, an average of more than 50 students for each TA and Prof. Schuh. We do not have time to read both a draft and the final version of every paper and do all the other work associated with this class.
Fairness: Students who get comments on drafts of their papers have an obvious advantage over students who do not. Since we cannot read drafts of ALL papers, it would be unfair to read drafts papers of a few students who made it a point to ask.
Danger of misunderstanding: Inevitably situations would arise where a student might revise a section of a paper based on comment made in a hurried reading of a draft ("hurried" for the reasons above), thinking that now the section would be worth full credit, yet the revision did not address the problem, and the student ended up losing points. The student would be unhappy, thinking that he or she had been misled, and the TA or Prof. would be unhappy, thinking that the student was trying to use them as a scapegoat.

Our policy: By e-mail or during office hours, you may ask a TA or Prof Schuh specific question about specific sections of your papers. Example questions might be

how to describe particular language sounds which differ from the sounds of English
whether a description that you have proposed makes sense
whether a particular layout of examples is satisfactory
whether a particular topic fits well into a particular section of the paper
whether you have too few or too many examples for a particular subject

Of course, you can always ask any of us to go over concepts from the course. Insofar as we have knowledge of the relevant languages, we may also be able to help you formulate your discussion.