State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness

STAAR?

State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness

English II

Persuasive Scoring Guide

April 2018

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English II Persuasive Prompt

Read the following quotation from baseball legend Babe Ruth (1895?1948).

It's the way a team plays as a whole that determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.

--Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth believed that a team could be great only if its individual players were willing to work together. Think carefully about this belief.

Write an essay stating your opinion on whether it's better to succeed individually or as part of a team.

Be sure to --

? state your position clearly ? use appropriate organization ? provide specific support for your argument ? choose your words carefully ? edit your writing for grammar, mechanics, and spelling

STAAR English II Persuasive Writing

Score Point 1

The essay represents a very limited writing performance.

Organization/Progression

qq The organizing structure of the essay is inappropriate to the purpose or the specific demands of the prompt. The writer uses organizational strategies that are only marginally suited to the persuasive task, or they are inappropriate or not evident at all. The absence of a functional organizational structure causes the essay to lack clarity and direction.

qq Most ideas are generally related to the issue specified in the prompt, but the writer's position is missing, unclear, or illogical. The writer may fail to maintain focus on the issue, may include extraneous information, or may shift abruptly from idea to idea, weakening the coherence of the essay.

qq The writer's progression of ideas is weak. Repetition or wordiness sometimes causes serious disruptions in the flow of the essay. At other times the lack of transitions and sentence-to-sentence connections causes the writer to present ideas in a random or illogical way, making one or more parts of the essay unclear or difficult to follow.

Development of Ideas

qq The development of ideas is weak. The argument is ineffective and unconvincing because the reasons and evidence the writer uses to support the position are inappropriate, vague, or insufficient.

qq The essay is insubstantial because the writer's response to the prompt is vague or confused. In some cases, the essay as a whole is only weakly linked to the prompt. In other cases, the writer develops the essay in a manner that demonstrates a lack of understanding of the persuasive writing task.

Use of Language/Conventions

qq The writer's word choice may be vague or limited. It reflects little or no awareness of the persuasive purpose and does not establish a tone appropriate to the task. Word choice may impede the quality and clarity of the essay.

qq Sentences are simplistic, awkward, or uncontrolled, significantly limiting the effectiveness of the essay.

qq The writer has little or no command of sentence boundaries and spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and usage conventions. Serious and persistent errors create disruptions in the fluency of the writing and sometimes interfere with meaning.

Texas Education Agency Student Assessment Division

April 2018

STAAR English II April 2018

Persuasive -- 1

Score Point 1 In this essay the writer attempts to argue in favor of succeeding as part of a team effort but does not establish a clear position. The progression of ideas is weak because the writer repeats ideas (The only way a team will be successful is if all the members work together) throughout the brief essay. Additionally, instead of offering original thoughts or specific examples, the writer merely reiterates the quotation and concludes with only a restatement of the idea from the quotation, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the persuasive writing task. Furthermore, the writer's sentences are awkward and uncontrolled ("The only way that a team will ever be succesfull is that all of players are working together"; "In the team you can have good player but that don't work good together they won't be good as a team"), significantly limiting the effectiveness of this very limited writing performance.

STAAR English II April 2018

Persuasive -- 2

Score Point 1 The writer begins this response by repeating the quotation from the prompt and then posing rhetorical questions (". . . what do you think? Is it successful when you play individually or as part of a team?") before offering the weak position in the beginning of the second paragraph that "working as a team is so much better" than working individually. The absence of a functional organizational structure causes the essay to lack clarity and direction. Additionally, the writer attempts to support the position, but the assertions that working as a team will enable you to "get more done when you work individually" because "you have more support and effort" and that "you have help when you can't do it" are vague and insufficient, resulting in an ineffective argument. Furthermore, sentences are awkward and uncontrolled ("When you work in a team you can get more things done when you work individually"; "So working as a group it's more better then working individually, just think about Babe Ruth quote"), significantly limiting the effectiveness of the essay. For these reasons, this essay demonstrates a very limited writing performance.

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