Writing a term paper, the good, the bad and the ugly

One of the more difficult parts of my job as a teaching faculty is to train students in the production of good quality term papers. In any agricultural science, the production of  a quality term paper requires it conform to certain standards with respect to format, writing style and scientific content.  Student must master all three components in order to score well with their papers.

I hope to provide insight into the process I employ to arrive at a term paper grade. Perhaps by understanding my thought process during grading, you will produce a paper that achieves a better score. Come March of this term I will be required to grade more than 60 SLSC 240 term papers and this is not my only course this term. In addition, no two topic are the same, so there is no repeating content as is typical of a midterm or final exam. Any exercise or exam where all student respond to the same question(s)  is definitely easier and faster to grade. It is important to me that I provide a fair assessment for each students term paper whether it be the 3rd or 55th paper I have read.  To achieve that, I must apply a rigorous marking scheme to each paper which segregates the marks into categories. I allocate marks in three general areas:
                                                   1. paper format - 30%
                                                   2. scientific content - 40%
                                                   3. writing style and accuracy - 30%

Based on this allocation of marks a student could theoretically make a mess of the format but still achieve a 70% grade. In practice that does not happen because almost invariably a student who does a poor job of formatting the paper will also have shortcomings in the science and writing components. The following is a list of questions and thoughts I go through as I grade your paper.

 A. Paper format
        1. Does the paper have all the necessary components; title page, abstract, table of contents, list of figures and tables and references?
        2. Are graphs and tables captioned properly, author and date cited?
        3. Is the reference section formatted correctly, alphabetical order etc.?
        4. Are all authors cited in the text listed in reference section and vice versa?

B. Scientific content 
        1. Is the stated topic, as articulated in the introduction, covered completely, accurately and logically?
        2. Is the topic very general or specific (narrower focus)?
        3. Are the scientific concepts presented of a complex or simple nature?
        4. Are the number of references cited large enough to indicate that the topic has been thoroughly researched?
        5. Is the data presented useful? Does it support and clarify the concepts presented?
        6. Is there evidence of interpretation or synthesis of data as opposed to simply reporting it?

C. Writing and grammar
        1. Is the paper grammatically sound?
        2. Is sentence construction such, that meaning is clear?
        3. Does the paper contain complex and / or cumbersome sentences which cloud the meaning?
        4. Is scientific terminology used correctly?
        5. Are paragraphs constructed to provide a logical flow of concepts and ideas?

It is difficult to be more specific about the actual grading process, table 1 is an attempt to shed some light on the process.

Table 1. A general description of the mark allocation for SLSC 240 term paper.

Writing a well crafted term paper requires a lot of practice. In my own case I was 20 years into my career before I felt that my writing skills had really matured. To those students in 1st or 2nd year, I am not expecting miracles; however, if you pay attention to the key components of paper writing and ask for help if necessary, you can certainly achieve an acceptable grade.