Academic Writing Tips & Resources

Evaluation Check List
for Essay Writing

I. Introduction

•  Did you write a clear thesis?

II. Body

A. Topic One (the first reason/example why you believe the thesis)

•  Does the first topic sentence support the thesis?

•  Do you explain each example and tell why it's important? (Don't just write a list)

•  Are there enough examples, explanations, details to provide support for the first topic?

•  Do the examples and details follow a logical order?

•  Are the transition words used correctly?

B.   Topic Two (the second reason/example why you believe your thesis)

•  Did you use a transition to introduce your second topic?

•  Do you explain each example and tell why it's important? (Don't just write a list)

•  Is this second topic sentence different than the first topic sentence?

•  Are there enough examples, explanations, details to provide support for the second topic sentence?

•  Are these examples clearly different than the examples you used in your first topic?

•  Do the examples, details, explanations, (support) follow a logical order?

•  Are the transition words used correctly?

B.   Topic Two (the second reason/example why you believe your thesis)

•  Did you use a transition to introduce your second topic?

•  Do you explain each example and tell why it's important? (Don't just write a list)

•  Is this second topic sentence different than the first topic sentence?

•  Are there enough examples, explanations, details to provide support for the second topic sentence?

•  Are these examples clearly different than the examples you used in your first topic?

•  Do the examples, details, explanations, (support) follow a logical order?

•  Are the transition words used correctly?

C.    Topic Three (The third topic is only necessary if you need to provide additional support for your thesis).

•  Did you use a transition to introduce your third support topic?

•  Do you explain each example and tell why it's important? (Don't just write a list)

•  Is your third topic sentence clearly different than your first and second topic sentences?

•  Are there enough examples, explanations, details to provide support for the third topic?

•   Are the examples clearly different than the examples you used in your first and second topic?

•  Do the examples, details, explanation follow a logical order?

•  Are transition words used correctly?

III. Conclusion

•  Did you restate the thesis?

•  Did you sum up your two or three topic sentences?

IV. Overall Structure

•  Does the whole essay flow in a logical order?

•  Is each paragraph related to the paragraph before it and the paragraph after it?

•  Do the introduction and conclusion match (are they discussing the same thesis and supporting ideas?)?

V. Grammar

•  Do your subjects and verbs agree? (If the subject is plural, the verb doesn't add "s").

•  Do your verbs follow a logical verb tense? For example, you don't switch from present to past or past to present without a goodreason.

•  Do your pronouns match the nouns they are replacing? For example, students/they; Gallaudet/it; Carol/she; Bob/he.

•  Do you use capital letters where necessary? For example, proper nouns like English are always capitalized.

•  Do you use the proper forms of related words? For example, success (n), successful (adj.), succeed (v), successfully (adv).

•  Is your spelling correct?