| Grading Criteria | |
| Correction Key |
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You are accountable for knowing stylistics of organization, quotations, etc. The most common style guide to follow is the MLA manual, but I am fine with APA or others, as long as you follow one and are consistent.
Include cover page with Name, class number, date and title. Make sure there are page numbers in the top right corner of each page.
Underline titles or set them in italics. (i.e. Cien años de soledad or Cien años de soledad)
Accents are just as important as spelling -- I will not accept papers with accents scribbled in at the last minute. For help, follow this link: Accents . For help with how to type accents and upside down question marks or exclamation marks, see this page.
Rough drafts of compositions may be submitted electronically, however all final drafts are to be submitted in hard copy. When rewriting your composition, you may want to consult my Clave, to understand the corrections on your paper.
Keep in mind that a composition/ essay requires days and even weeks of preparation. It should not be written hurriedly or at the last minute. Give yourself time to organize your thoughts and write carefully and then revise your writing.
Please be aware of some of the most
common grammatical mistakes in writing Spanish:
| Incorrect | Correct |
| "Actualmente" to mean "actually" | "En realidad", "en vigor" |
| "se gusta" | "le gusta" |
| "lo" or "las" as a subject pronoun (i.e. Lo es importante) | "Es importante" |
| "Sofía le gusta" | "A Sofía le gusta" |
| "yo tuve diversión" o "tuve un buen tiempo" | "me divertí" |
| "desde él es mi amigo" | "como él es mi amigo" o "puesto que es mi amigo" |
| "ropas" | "ropa" |
| "es bien" | "está bien" or "es bueno que..." |
| "un otro" to mean another | "otro" |
| "Porque soy muy generoso, voy a darte el dinero" | "por ser muy generoso…" |
| "todo de los" | "todos los" (there is no de between todo and whatever comes after it.) |
| Leaving verbs in the middle of a sentence in the infinitive | Conjugate all verbs when they appear by themselves away from an preposition. |
| "Conozco a un hombre se llama Jorge." | "Conozco a un hombre que se llama / llamado Jorge" |
| using "encontrar" when you want to say "to meet" | "reunirse con" o "conocer" in the preterite |
| "hay mucho para hacer" | "hay mucho que hacer" |
| "todas tipas de personas" | "todos tipos de personas" (tipo does not agree w/ personas) |
POOR - minimal information; information lacks substance, inapropriate or irrelevant information; or not enough to evaluate, little to no or poorly documented citations.
BETTER - adequate information; some development of ideas; some ideas lack supporting detail or evidence, inconsistent treatment/use of citations.
BEST - very complete information; thesis statements are supported with
documented examples ; thorough, relevant, on target.
Citations are well integrated and documented.
POOR - series of separate sentences with no transitions; disconnected ideas; no apparent order to the content; very choppy, disjointed, or not enough to evaluate.
BETTER - an apparent order to the content; somewhat choppy, loosely organized; lacks logical sequencing of ideas but main points stand out.
BEST - logically and effectively ordered from introduction to
conclusion; main points and details are connected; fluent.
POOR -inadequate, repetitive, incorrect use of words leads to confused or obscured meaning; literal translations; abundance of literal translations and invented words or words in English; or not enough to evaluate.
BETTER - some erroneous word usage or choice, but meaning is not confused or obscured; some use of appropriate vocabulary.
BEST - broad; impressive, precise and effective word use/choice;
extensive use of appropriate vocabulary.
POOR - abundance of errors in use and form of the grammar; frequent errors in subject/verb and noun/adjective agreement; non-Spanish sentence structure; erroneous use of language making the work mostly incomprehensible; no evidence of having edited the work for language; or not enough to evaluate.
BETTER - occasional errors (more than 3 per paragraph) in use and form of the grammar; occasional errors in subject/verb or noun/adjective agreement; erroneous use of language does not impede comprehensibility; some editing for language evident but not complete.
BEST - virtually no errors in the grammar; very few errors in
subject/verb or noun/adjective agreement; work was well edited for language.