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Individualized Writing Courses for Homeschool Families...

"Our goal is to address the precise needs, interests, and skills of students who have chosen to learn at home."

General Information

Individualized Writing Courses

Resources

Skill Sheets
Letter Writing Program
TEACHLetter (a free monthly resource)
Bookstore
Links

Grading Option

We're often asked the question, "Do you assign grades?" The answer we prefer is "No!" Why? Because grades are subjective. Anyone who has written a paper and received a grade on it knows that not all teachers use the same grading philosophy. Writing isn't like math: it doesn't involve concrete answers that are either right or wrong. It involves many different factors. As a result, grading a piece of writing isn't a simple process at all. More importantly, if you don't know what criteria a teacher is using to assign grades, then the grades assigned by that teacher are meaningless, and often unfair.

Still, when our writing consultants work with students, they need to mentally evaluate their students' work in order to figure out which lesson to present next, and what sort of feedback to provide. All educators know that evaluating student work with the intent of planning lessons and addressing various skills is an integral part of the teaching process. We've therefore divided those skills into four areas: tone, structure, clarity, and overall effect. Using those four key areas (they're described further down this page), a writing consultant can easily provide grades. Each area can be judged in terms of its quality: an "A" represents work that is clearly "excellent"; a "B" represents work that is clearly "above average but not quite excellent"; a "C" represents work that is "average"; a "D" represents work that is "sub-standard"; and an "F" represents work that is "lacking any legitimate quality".

Of course, you can feel free to disagree with our grading system. If that's the case, don't ask your writing consultant to use it! You're more than welcome to assign your own grades, or to ignore the issue of grades altogether. If we had it our way, no one would be assigned grades, and everyone would work until their skills and papers were perfect. We came up with this system because many of our students' families are required by various state laws to assign grades.

To take advantage of the grading option, simply ask your writing consultant to make use of the grading option, and he or she will assign a grade to the paper in question. And if you're interested, click here to read about our grading philosophy, and a more teacher-directed grading system that you can implement yourself.

The Four Areas

Structure:

By appropriate structure, we mean that all pieces of writing should have some sort of structure, whether that structure is mandated by the form of writing (a sonnet, for example, has a very specific structure), or by the function (i.e. the structure of a magazine article or work of fiction is created solely by the author) of the writing. The structure of any given piece of writing must be appropriate in that it must serve the writing’s purpose; that is, the writer of a murder mystery probably shouldn’t reveal the identity of the killer until the end of the book. We use the word “probably” because a skilled author is certainly capable of spinning a compelling tale around nearly any structure.

The structure of a piece of writing is nothing more nor less than its combined parts, each of which works in conjunction with the others to create a meaningful whole. On a very simple level we might say that the structure of any piece of writing must involve a beginning, a middle, and an end. Such things are often called constructions or components. Other examples of constructions include introductory paragraphs, salutations, bodies (in the case of an essay or report, for example), quotations, invocations, and expositions. Essentially, any group of words or sentences that has an identifiable purpose and function can be considered a construction, and within any given construction there can easily exist several smaller constructions. Words, in and of themselves, are constructions, as are phrases and sentences (call them grammatical constructions), literary devices, passages, and paragraphs.

Why is structure important? Because it determines the “shape” of a piece of writing. Structure determines whether or not a reader is properly guided through a report, or inspired at the end of a personal essay. It controls the order in which a reader receives certain pieces of information. Anyone who has seen a movie or read a book that involves flashbacks, or has noticed a recurring theme (the “good guys" in older films wore white, while the “bad guys” wore black) has seen an example of structure.

Tone:

Tone in a piece of writing is very similar to tone in a piece of music; both involve not necessarily the emotions that are generated by the composition, but the “feel” of the overall piece. A sad story can have a sophisticated tone, just as a motivating speech can have a down-to-earth tone, or an eloquent one.

Some people confuse tone with emotion. On the contrary, it is much more than that. Tone may be defined as the consistent manner in which every single construction is created, executed, and therefore received in a piece of writing. Or, put simply, it may be defined as the narrator’s overall attitude towards his or her subject.

Clarity:

Clarity is the ease with which a reader may understand the meaning of a piece of writing. It is dependent upon two things: the definiteness or directness of the author’s thoughts, and the extent to which the writing adheres to grammatical and mechanical conventions. Developing clarity is a matter of practice, and of reading examples of good writing.

Overall Effect:

When structure, tone, and clarity work together harmoniously, an overall effect is created. The effectiveness of this overall effect may be judged on the basis of whether or not it is singular. When we say that a piece of writing is singular, we mean to say that it leaves the reader with a single, overwhelming emotion or idea. Singularity refers to the degree to which a piece of writing accomplishes its intended job. If the reader is left with several different ideas and emotions, none of which are particularly powerful or interesting, it may be said that the writing lacks singularity, and that it is therefore undesirable. Whether a writer’s intent is to inform or to persuade, to entertain or to solicit, the writing must do its job.