Seminar Response Paper Overview and Rubric

Seminar papers should be 1-2 Pages long and respond to the assigned reading from the week. The papers will be evaluated using the  rubric at the bottom of this document. Please note there is a seminar paper due for the Monday  we have off (Week 9, due Monday, May 27) which substantially revises and improves a previous response paper.

Topic: You are free to address any significant topic that is brought up by the week’s assigned reading. Each week we will give a suggested writing topic for those who have “writer’s block” when attempting to respond to the text.






engagement with the text

does not consider ideas in the text

simply restates the ideas in the text

demonstrates consideration of ideas in the text and their consequences

applies ideas in the text to different contexts, including other texts

seriously considers ideas in the text and subjects those ideas to scrutiny

Completion of reading assignment

appears to have not read a significant amount of the assignment

appears to have read part of the reading assignment

appears to have read most of the reading assignment

appears to have fully read the reading assignment

appears to have fully read and understood the assignment

Spelling punctuation and grammar

Has not used spell check or used it incorrectly. Improper punctuation. Has many errors which make it difficult to understand.

has  errors which make it difficult to understand the writing. uses the incorrect spelling of words (e.g., their they’re)

has an error which may make a part of the writing assignment difficult to comprehend

contains errors that do not hinder comprehension

Contains few minor errors

organization and structure

does not use paragraphs correctly

long paragraphs and run on sentences

has a beginning a middle and an end

has a clear beginning middle and end as well as transitions

has well crafted transitions between the beginning middle and end

voice and audience

mostly informal language

may drift into informality

implicit address to audience

demonstrates consideration of audience

explicitly addresses another participant in seminar who has done the reading

thesis and scope

has no thesis, summarizes text

has multiple, unrelated theses, addresses many topics

has a thesis but it is   not apparent at first reading, topics vaguely related

has a clear thesis, topic is obvious while reading

thesis clearly stated, topic is restricted to addressing the thesis