Paragraph

1. Does the introduction help your audience make the transition to the body of your essay?

2. Does each body paragraph express its main idea in a topic sentence as needed?

3. Are the main ideas – and topic sentences – clearly related to the thesis statement of the essay?

4. Are your body paragraphs developed? Is the development sufficient?

5. Does each body paragraph contain specific contain specific and concrete support for its main idea? Do the details provide examples, reasons, facts?

6. Are your facts, figures, and dates accurate?

7. Is each body paragraph arranged logically?

8. Does the conclusion give your reader a sense of completion?

9. Have you cut any material that goes off the topic?

10. Have you used necessary transition?

11. Do the paragraphs maintain coherence with pronouns, selective repetition, parallel structure?

12. Do you show relationships between paragraphs?

Sentence

1. Are your sentences concise?

2. Have you eliminated sentence fragments?

3. Have you eliminated comma splices and fused sentence?

4. Have you eliminated confusing shifts?

5. Have you eliminated misplaced modifiers?

6. Have you eliminated dangling modifiers?

7. Have you eliminated mixed sentences?

8. Have you eliminated incomplete sentences?

9. Do your sentences express clear relationships among ideas?

10. Do you use coordination correctly?

11. Do you use subordination correctly?

12. Do your sentences avoid faulty parallelism?

13. Do you use parallelism as needed to help your sentences deliver their meaning?

14. Does your writing style reveal sensitivity to the need for variety and emphasis?

15. Do your sentences vary in length?

16. Does the structure of your sentences help convey the emphasis?

Words

1. Have you used exact words?

2. Does your word choice reflect your intentions in denotation and connotation?

8. Sample Argumentative Essay The predominant reason students perform better with

Multiple exams are that they improve their study habits.

Greater regularity in test taking means greater regularity in studying for tests. Students prone to cramming will be forced to open their textbooks more often, keeping them away from long, “kamikaze” nights of studying. Regularity prepares them for the “real world” where you rarely take on large tasks at long intervals. Several tests also improve study habits by reducing procrastination. An article about procrastination from the Journal of Counseling Psychology reports that “students view exams as difficult, important, and anxiety provoking.” These symptoms of anxiety leading to procrastination could be solved if individual test importance was lessened, reducing the stress associated with the perceived burden.

With multiple exams, this anxiety decrease will free students to perform better. Several, less important tests may appear as less of an obstacle, allowing the students to worry less, leaving them free to concentrate on their work without any emotional hindrances. It is proven that "the performance of test-anxious subjects varies inversely with evaluation stress." It would also be to the psychological benefit of students if they were not subjected to the emotional ups and downs of large exams where they are virtually worry-free one moment and ready to check into the psychiatric ward the next.

Lastly, with multiple exams, students can learn how to perform better on future tests in the class. Regular testing allows them to "practice" the information they learned, thereby improving future test scores. In just two exams, they are not able to learn the instructor's personal examination.