Classroom Research: Assessment of Writing Skills – Thesis
Method
Two readers were assigned the task of reading all sixty-four papers (four papers for each of sixteen students), scoring each according to a five-point rubric devised to measure the students’ ability to craft and use strong argumentative theses as the guiding principle of their essay. For these readers, unlike for the “intellectual growth” readers, each paper was a free-standing essay. In other words, the readers did not know to which assignment the papers corresponded; nor did they know which essay belonged to which student. Readers were asked to consider only the papers’ performance with respect to its thesis with the hope of collecting the most reliable data possible.
Rubric
What follows is a brief description of the scoring rubric for each paper’s thesis (for the full rubric, click here). The descriptions are accompanied by examples of student theses for the purpose of exemplifying each category. In order to simplify matters for the reader, I have gathered examples of theses only from assignment III; hence, each example addresses the same assignment prompt, which asked students to “explore a paradox that arises from McDonaldization or McWorld.”
Thesis Level 5: “. . . will be clear and concise in style, represent complexity of thought and fully encapsulate the discussion executed in the body of the paper.” Out 128 scores for the semester (64 papers X 2 readers), 7 were scored at this level.
Essay 702323, “The Death of the Kimono and Similar Tragedies,” was the only essay of the entire semester’s collection that was marked a 5 for its thesis by both readers. The thesis:
The paradox here is that while the modern world linked nations together, individual countries could have acquired a broader variety in fashion, with countries swapping forms they found appealing. This is not the case, however, as both professional and casual western fashions have trumped foreign clothing, decreasing the diversity of world fashions and increasing the conformity and uniformity of McWorld.
Although
the thesis needed to be condensed into one concise statement, it nevertheless
meets the criteria set forth in the rubric by laying out a complex thought that
guides the writing in the entire paper. It delimits a manageable scope
for the paper and addresses a paradox that is fresh, unexpected, and
interesting. The student understands what globalization has meant for the
world in most sectors of the economy (the blending and homogenization of many
cultural productions) and contrasts that to the reality of western cultural
imperialism in the world of fashion. One of the most convincing sections
of the paper discusses the demise of the kimono, which the student is qualified
to discuss because of the student’s experience of having lived in
Thesis Level 4: “. . . will delimit a manageable scope for the paper and represent complexity of thought, but may contain syntactical, stylistic, or grammatical error that impede immediate comprehension. . . . a thesis at this level may fail to fully represent the intellectual work done in the body of the paper.” (25 level 4 theses out of 128 possible).
The thesis for essay 808323 is clear and offers a specific thought-provoking paradox:
Our beauty industry claims they sell unique, distinctive, and special products that allow women to express their individuality and exert their independence; however, in actuality, these beauty products and cosmetics are not only identical but in fact, encourage conformity.
While this thesis needed some revision to achieve the desired conciseness, its greater problem was its incongruity with the paper as a whole. From reading the thesis, one would expect a paper describing how women buy cosmetics to express their individuality, with a counter discussion of how those attempts actually end up making women look alike. Instead, the author discusses how the cosmetic industry markets its wares to women by touting the endless choices available for creating an “individual look,” but then showing how women actually have very little choice in the cosmetics they choose. Although the thesis implies the main thrust of the paper, it nevertheless misses the mark in setting forth the core argument from which the writer will proceed. Both readers awarded a 4 to this thesis.
Thesis Level 3: “. . . may be clearly stated and sum up the body of the paper, but will elicit a ‘so what’ response by the reader. In other words, a level 3 thesis will represent simple, unsophisticated thought . . .” (31 level 3 theses out of 128 possible).
Both readers awarded a 3 as a thesis score for essay 006327, “Apparel as Ideology.” The thesis for this paper was expressed as follows:
Although clothing is purchased and worn to convey certain non-associated images that the person wishes to express, such as sex, glamour, and athleticism, it usually is done so at the expense of individuality.
In some ways, this thesis resembles the exemplar for thesis level 4. It attempts to describe a paradox that hinges on the conflict between apparent individuality and actual conformity. The difference, however, is that this thesis claims that when people buy or wear garments to achieve a certain image, they lose individuality, a rather unremarkable observation that leads to few questions. The other trouble with this thesis is its failure to synthesize its various “images” into a meaningful generalization. Since the marketing of fashion in the body of the paper is discussed as an appeal to sexiness, glamour, and athleticism, the student opts to express each of these aspects of desire in the thesis as discreet, “non-associated images.” Hence, the thesis fails to achieve a meaningful generalization concerning the desire for an “image” and the consequent loss of individuality. The thesis does, however, provide an accurate guide for the body of the essay.
Thesis Level 2: “. . . will represent unsophisticated thought, but will also be poorly expressed, such that the writer’s meaning is not immediately evident . . . A 2 should also be assigned to a thesis that is understandable, but only faintly indicates the discussion pursued in the body of the paper. . . “ (50 level 2 theses out of 128 possible).
The thesis of essay 409330, “Media and Democracy,” is expressed thusly:
While media coverage may seem to be better now than it was in the past, due to technological advances, it has in fact lost some of its most important qualities, and as a result our democracy is in jeopardy.
This thesis, while struggling to connect an observation about the news media and the significance of that observation to American democracy, suggests a paper that will analyze the tension between well-justified expectations of improved news coverage (because of “technological advances”) and the actual loss of news quality. The body of the paper, however, explores the way the American news media have increasingly become structured as entertainment in order to appeal to the greatest audience (and turn the greatest profit). This observation finds its significance in the argument that when political, economic, social, and other serious news topics are presented in the form of entertainment, their ability to inform is diminished, resulting in an ill-informed and therefore compromised electorate. While the seeds of this idea are present in the writer’s thesis, the latter nevertheless remains too vague to guide the reader toward the expectation of what is actually discussed in the paper. This disconnect between the thesis and paper resulted in both readers awarding it a score of 2 for its thesis.
Thesis Level 1: “. . . no thesis at all, [one] that has nothing to do with the rest of the paper, or [one] that is so garbled and confusing that it is difficult or impossible to comprehend“ (15 level 2 theses out of 128 possible).
The last two sentences of the opening paragraph of essay 910337, “McWant becomes McNeed,” read as follows:
The distinction between need and want is blurred as companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi market their beverages as symbols of attitude, markers of desirable behavior, and tokens of a certain lifestyle. Soft drinks and other popular non-alcoholic beverages really have little to do with quenching one’s thirst.
Both readers assigned a 1 to this paper’s thesis both because it fails to relate to the rest of the paper except in the faintest way and also because it is unclear exactly what the thesis is. The main thrust of the paper is to argue how various industries – the soft-drink industry in particular – develop products that create tastes and dependencies in consumers to ensure a stable market. In addition to creating these dependencies, companies sell an “image” or “style” that has essentially nothing to do with the product itself. Perhaps if the writer of the paper had ended his introductory paragraph with the penultimate sentence (The distinction between . . . ), the readers may have assigned a 2 to his thesis. It does, after all, hint at the main idea in the body of the paper, though not clearly. By adding the final sentence (Soft drinks . . . ) however, the argument of the paper is further blurred and confused, leaving the reader uncertain of what to expect. Indeed, it is difficult to decipher how these two sentences are related.