Grades

In the syllabus, your instructor will describe his or her grading policies, explaining how much each assignment counts toward the final course grade.  As each paper is assigned, the instructor will explain the criteria for evaluation.

Your grade in a composition course should reflect the quality of your writing. The grade may be affected by effort or good citizenship (attendance, participation, etc.), but for the most part, your grade will be determined by the quality of your papers. Grades of A and B are awarded only to students whose papers are consistently above average.

You have a right to understand your grade. If you have questions about the grade on a paper, schedule an appointment with your instructor. 

Be sure that your expectations about grades are realistic.  Remember these points:

1. Most students do not earn the same grades in college English classes that they earned in high school. The assignments in college are more challenging, and the expectations are higher.
2. You are responsible for the quality of your papers.  Feedback from the instructor or classmates is just that – feedback, intended to guide your work on revision.  The decision about how to act on feedback is up to you.  When instructors and classmates give feedback, they cannot predict what your next draft will look like or what grade it will earn. 
3. Working hard in a composition course—taking assignments seriously, starting papers early, writing several drafts, seeking help in the Writing Center, making friends with The St. Martin’s Handbook, being receptive to feedback—will serve any student well. But a semester is short: even the most diligent effort may not take a student to college-level competence in fifteen weeks if his or her skills were seriously deficient from the start. Sentence-level problems are particularly stubborn, so a student with weak control over sentences may need more than one semester of practice and instruction.

Students with any grade below C- in Composition I or II must repeat the course. If you take a course twice, earning a higher grade the second time, the higher grade will replace the first grade in your Grade Point Average (though the first grade will remain visible on your transcript).

Composition teachers are strict about the standard for passing. They are careful not to pass a Comp I student if he or she isn’t likely to succeed in Comp II, and they are equally careful not to pass a Comp II student if he or she cannot meet the demands of upper-division writing-intensive courses. Consequently, many students repeat their composition courses. There is no shame in repeating a course, and it is a far better fate than trying to struggle through college without the requisite writing skills.