Tuesday
In many creative writing classes, critical writing complements the creative writing assignments, with perhaps the most common type of critical writing the "reading as a writer" essay. Here, the writer analyzes a published story by focusing on how an author achieves success with either a single technique or various techniques. For example, on this blog, I recently wrote an article about how Charles D'Ambrosio achieves success with image patterning in his story "The Point."
Below is a rubric I use for the grading of such essays. The five domains (context & purpose for writing, content development, genre & disciplinary conventions, sources & evidence, and control of syntax & mechanics) came from a writing rubric from the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The grade of 4 for each domain includes 3 characteristics; the grade of 3 results from a problem with 1 of these characteristics; the grade of 2, with 2 of the 3 characteristics; the grade of 3, with problems with all 3 characteristics. Here is the rubric:
Download file here--> Critical Writing Rubric.pdf
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