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How the Essay Is Scored

Even with some errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, a student can get a top score on the essay. The highly trained high school and college composition teachers who score the essays will follow a rubric that focuses upon content, organization, and language usage and sentence structure. Each essay will be scored independently by two such readers on a 1-6 scale. If the readers’ scores differ by more two points, the test will be evaluated by a third reader. The rubric for the new SAT writing section is similar to the one used for the current SAT II: Writing Test, which follows:

Score of 6

A paper in this category demonstrates clear and consistent competence, though it may have occasional errors. Such a paper:

  1. effectively and insightfully addresses the writing task
  2. well organized and fully developed, uses clearly appropriate examples to support ideas
  3. displays consistent facility in the use of language demonstrating variety in sentence structure and range of vocabulary

Score of 5

A paper in this category demonstrates reasonably consistent competence, though it will have occasional errors or lapses in quality. Such a paper:

  1. effectively addresses the writing task
  2. is generally well organized and well-developed, using appropriate examples to support ideas
  3. displays facility in the use of language, demonstrating some syntactic variety and range of vocabulary

Score of 4

A paper in this category demonstrates adequate competence with occasional errors and lapses in quality. Such a paper:

  1. addresses the writing task
  2. is organized and adequately developed, using examples to support ideas
  3. displays adequate but inconsistent facility in the use of language, presenting some errors in grammar or diction
  4. presents minimal sentence variety

Score of 3

A paper in this category demonstrates developing competence. Such a paper may contain one or more of the following weaknesses:

  1. inadequate organization or development
  2. inappropriate or insufficient details to support ideas
  3. an accumulation of errors in grammar, diction, or sentence structure

Score of 2

A paper in this category demonstrates some incompetence. Such a paper is flawed by one or more of the following weaknesses:

  1. poor organization
  2. thin development
  3. little or inappropriate detail to support ideas
  4. frequent errors in grammar, diction, and sentence structure

Score of 1

A paper in this category demonstrates incompetence. Such a paper is seriously flawed by one or more of the following weaknesses:

  1. very poor organization
  2. very thin development
  3. usage and syntactical errors so severe that meaning is somewhat obscured

Adapted from the following websites: www.collegeboard.com and www.act.org.