Scoring Guide for a Profile Essay

1.) You write about a place, an activity, or a person involved in a place or activity.

2.) You not only provide enough information that the uninformed reader understands what the activity or place consists of, but you also guide our response to it by creating a dominant impression of it.

3.) You focus the essay on these two goals (information and dominant impression).

4.) In addition to other kinds of detail, you use visual detail and quotations to create the dominant impression.

5.) The essay has an introduction, body, and conclusion.

6.) Each paragraph is unified – by having one, and only one, topic – and the paragraphs are long enough to be convincing, their topics developed with specific information.

7.) The essay is carefully organized – the paragraphs are arranged in a logical order.

8.) The essay is coherent – a forecasting statement is included in the introduction, the first sentence of each paragraph is a topic sentence, there are smooth transitions between (and within) paragraphs, and the conclusion refers back to the introduction.

9.) The choice of words is precise and appropriate and standard English.

10.) If there are errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and mechanics, they do not distract the reader nor obscure the essay’s ideas.

11.) You submit a portfolio containing all the work you did in the process of writing the essay.