Writing papers (how to grade)...?

Question

I've always done well with writing papers in school. Now that I'm homeschooling I want to make sure that I continue to advance and make sure I don't lose the proficiency I have for it. Can I hire someone (i.e. an English tutor, teacher, professor, etc.) to grade my papers? Has anyone done this before? Was it expensive?

Answer 1

Contact a university in your area and look into the Literature/Language department there.  Send emails to professors and ask them how much they would charge to grade an essay of yours... maybe ask if you have a "by page" rate... i.e. $5 a page, or whatever.

Make sure if you do this, you explain your situation and your intent.  Tell them you are looking for worthy criticism.

Answer 2

Using Rubrics is a very good idea.

Consider taking some of your writing courses through a coop or community college.

If you use MS Word, a built in tool will also give you some indication of your writing skills.

Here is how you do it:  

With your document open, click F7.

Make sure "Readability Statistics" is turned ON.

It will produce a little report that includes ...

- Number of passive sentences (active better than passive)

- Flesch Reading Ease

- Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level (what grade level are you writing at?)

You might also want to check out the Purdue Online Writing Lab I referrence below.  It is a great resource.

***UPDATE:

On the Purdue "OWL" site, click on "Parents" and then scroll to the bottom.  There is a link that will allow you to send an email to a graduate level English instructor with SPECIFIC (not do my homework for me) grammar and writing questions.  It is free.

Answer 3

Contact Sycamore Tree, they have a composition evaluation service, they will issue a letter grade for each paper you send in.  They will do this for enrolled students or non-enrolled students.

Information: 714-668-1343

Or, if you can't afford that (it costs about $80 a semester), then what you need to do is have your parents get a writing rubric, they each part of the rubric is worth so many points... they kind of objectively decide how you did on each part of rubric and then figure a grade based on points possible and points earned.

http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/rubri...

http://www.learner.org/channel/workshops...

http://www.umd.umich.edu/mitten/khuber/M...

http://www.rubrician.com/general.htm

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGkm_gOYRHUF...

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGkm_gOYRHUF...

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGkm_gOYRHUF...

Rubrics can be helpful for self assessment also, before sending a paper in to be graded you can use a rubric to try to improve it.