Assessment

Broadly speaking, grades are proportioned to the vigor of the students’ engagement with the material. (Vigor, however, is not always correlated with effort!) The grades for this course are not curved. Students should remember, however, that grading against absolute standards tends to result in lower average grades for introductory courses than in upper-level seminars.

My Feedback

I will return your essays to you in PDF form with my feedback written using the Comments feature in Adobe Acrobat. You will need to download the latest version of the free Adobe Reader to read my comments.

Mistakes

I make my own fair share of mistakes when grading. These mistakes are both substantive (misunderstanding) and formal (e.g. calculation, recording, &c.) If you think I’ve made a mistake, please email me with a detailed explanation; and I will redress it as soon as possible.