Op-Ed Rhetorical Analysis

Excellent!- A

Very Strong – B

Competent – C

Not Yet Competent

Criterion Value

Comprehension – Elements of argument

• Identifies the author’s most important evidence and support
• Meaningful discussion of the author’s reasoning
• Evaluation of the argument in context

• Identifies the author’s use of evidence and support
• Discussion of the author’s reasoning
• Evaluation of the argument in context

• There might be more summary than analysis
• Information might be incorrectly identified as evidence.

25%

Consideration of the genre –

Identifies elements of the genre

• Demonstrates specific elements of op-ed as presented in class readings and lectures

• Makes good observations about genre, although they may be more general

• Little to no discussion of the genre., or inaccurate statements about the genre

20%

Development

• Abundant use of direct outside text to support the analysis

• Effective use of direct outside text to support most of the analysis

• Little to no use direct use of the outside text.
• Little discussion of specific parts of the essay

25%

Organization

• Effective use of paragraphing
• Thoughtful introduction and conclusion
• Logical connection of ideas from one to the next

• Clear paragraphing, although some paragraphs might be overly short or combine more than one idea

• Unclear paragraphing or a more “freewrite” style of writing

15%

Use of language

• Sophisticated sentence level expression

• A variety of sentence styles,
• Concise expression
• Natural (not stiff or overly formal) expression

• Good sentence level expression
• A variety of sentence styles, although there may be more simple sentences
• Concise expression
• Mostly natural (not stiff or overly formal) expression

• An over-reliance on simple sentence structure
• Inaccurate word choices or a reliance on overly formal language

15%