Criteria Goucher faculty consider most important to proficient writing:

______Students should demonstrate that they can take positions rather than merely describing topics; college-level writers should be able to analyze and to argue rationally.

______Students should organize their papers' major points in a logical fashion, using different modes of development appropriately (e.g., definition, comparison, illustration).

______Students' theses should be clear and appropriate for their papers' size, with appropriate transition among major parts.

______Students should use supporting evidence appropriate to their theses, should handle evidence with authority, and should document evidence properly when required.

______Students' paragraphs should be coherently developed, and should have clear topics--formal topic sentences are strongly recommended as an aid to reading.

______Students should use standard grammar and spelling. Sentences should be coherent, unambiguous, complete and properly punctuated, should maintain consistent gender and number in pronoun reference, and should maintain proper subject-verb relations.

______Students should use appropriate variety in sentences' syntax and usage.

______Students should demonstrate adequate research skills and appropriate documentation formats, when necessary showing familiarity with library resources, especially bibliographic indices.*

Some supplemental criteria also considered important by the Goucher faculty:

______Students often should use complex sentences rather than merely simple or compound sentences, demonstrating effective subordination of clauses.

______Except when required by the genre (i.e., lab reports), students usually should use strong verbs, avoid passive and vague constructions, and control tense shifts.

______Students should use diction that is clear, accurate, and appropriate, demonstrating a vocabulary sufficiently extensive for college writing.

*The following criteria are guidelines for defining "adequate research skills" etc.

1) The writer should be able to formulate an adequately focused research question that controls the process of searching for, evaluating, and using sources.

2) When conducting research, the writer should clearly distinguish between primary and secondary sources, and between scholarly and non-scholarly secondary sources, basing the thesis primarily on primary sources and scholarly secondary sources, unless the instructor specifically indicates otherwise.

3) The writer should be able to identify key issues currently in debate about the paper's topic, and should be able to identify scholars who are responsible for the primary opinions about them.

4) The writer should base the thesis on the integrated results of the research rather than trying to make the evidence support a pre-existing thesis, merely summarizing another scholar's thesis, or stringing together a series of other scholars' theses without providing any independent insight about them or the topic.

5) The writer should summarize and quote directly from sources as needed, but should never substitute summary or direct quotation for the integrating function of a thesis.