Grading

How Grades are Accorded
in the English Department’s Exams

Prepared/Translated from Arabic
By
Ahmed Gamal


A) General Grading Criteria:

The following grading criteria were issued by the department committee on 9/5/2004 in Arabic.

The following grades are to be accorded according to the following criteria:

1) Excellent:
· Correct language without any mistakes
· Accurate, complete answer contributing new dimensions
Ø (Probably due to quoting from reference books)
· Excellent Competencies of organization and creativity

2) Very Good:
· Altogether Correct language
· Accurate, complete answer
· Good Competencies of organisation and creativity

3) Good:
· Average good language with just a few mistakes
· Sufficient information

4) Fair:
· Average language with correct sentence structure, grammar and spelling
· Reasonable information

5) Weak:
· Weak language
· Incomplete answer

6) Very Weak:
· Very weak language
· Huge Gaps in information
· In a case where a student misunderstands a question, s/he is not be accorded “zero” or the marks to enable him/her to succeed

7) Zero:
· No answer at all
· Utterly Irrelevant answer

B) Cognitive Skills to be Tested in Exams:

Good exams must be comprehensive in the sense that it focuses on more than one or two of the following mental, learning skills and also in the sense that it covers most of the curricular units. Exams that employ just the first skill of knowledge depend on automatic memorisation and are hence considered as non-objective and unreliable. Multiple choice, true/false, complete, connect questions are considered different forms of objective tests (the same marks accorded by different graders/examiners).

Bloom’s Taxonomy*

Benjamin Bloom created this taxonomy for categorising level of abstraction of questions that commonly occur in educational settings. The taxonomy provides a useful structure in which to categorise test questions, since professors will characteristically ask questions within particular levels, and if you can determine the levels of questions that will appear on your exams, you will be able to study using appropriate strategies.

Competence: Skills Demonstrated

Knowledge: observation and recall of information knowledge of dates, events, places knowledge of major ideas mastery of subject matter Question Cues:list, define, tell, describe, identify, show, label, collect, examine, tabulate, quote, name, who, when, where, etc.

Comprehension:understanding information grasp meaning translate knowledge into new context interpret facts, compare, contrast order, group, infer causes predict consequences Question Cues: summarise, describe, interpret, contrast, predict, associate, distinguish, estimate, differentiate, discuss, extend

Application: use information use methods, concepts, theories in new situations solve problems using required skills or knowledge Questions Cues: apply, demonstrate, calculate, complete, illustrate, show, solve, examine, modify, relate, change, classify, experiment, discover

Analysis: seeing patterns organisation of parts recognition of hidden meanings identification of components Question Cues:analyse, separate, order, explain, connect, classify, arrange, divide, compare, select, explain, infer

Synthesis: use old ideas to create new ones generalise from given facts relate knowledge from several areas predict, draw conclusions Question Cues:combine, integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, plan, create, design, invent, what if?, compose, formulate, prepare, generalise, rewrite

Evaluation: compare and discriminate between ideas assess value of theories, presentations make choices based on reasoned argument verify value of evidence recognise subjectivity Question Cuesassess, decide, rank, grade, test, measure, recommend, convince, select, judge, explain, discriminate, support, conclude, compare, summarise

* From Benjamin S. Bloom Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.Published by Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Copyright © 1984 by Pearson Education.Adapted by permission of the publisher.