Self-Evaluation Form
Note: A completed self-evaluation form must be turned in with your final draft of every essay.
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Self-Evaluation of Essays: A Brief Guide to Evaluating Your Own Writing
By Richard Nordquist
You’re probably used to having your writing evaluated by teachers. The odd abbreviations (“AGR,” “REF,” “AWK!”), the comments in the margins, the grade at the end of the paper – these are all methods used by instructors to identify what they see as the strengths and weaknesses of your work. Such evaluations can be helpful, but they’re no substitute for a thoughtful self-evaluation.
As the writer, you can evaluate the whole process of composing a paper, from coming up with a topic to editing the final draft. Your instructor, on the other hand, often can evaluate only the final product.
A good self-evaluation is neither a defense nor an apology. Rather, it’s a way of becoming more aware of what you go through when you write and of what troubles (if any) that you regularly run into. Writing a brief self-evaluation each time you have completed a writing project should make you more aware of your strengths as a writer and help you see more clearly what skills you need to work on.
Finally, if you decide to share your self-evaluations with a writing instructor or tutor, your comments can guide your teachers as well. By seeing where you are having problems, they may be able to offer more helpful advice when they come to evaluate your work.
So after you finish your next composition, try writing a concise self-evaluation.
Author: In order to help your instructor evaluate this essay, you should be as specific as possible in answering the following questions.
1. Without looking at the assignment sheet, paraphrase the assignment for this essay.
2. What is the thesis (main idea) of your essay? What are you trying to say in this essay?
3. What part of writing this essay took the most time? What did you have the most trouble with?
4. What are the strengths of your essay? What do you like best about your essay?
5. What are the weaknesses of your essay? What do you like least about your essay? What part of this essay could still be improved?
6. How much time did you spend on this essay?
7. Free-write for a few minutes (at least 75 words) about the process of writing this essay and how you feel that it turned out. Was it easy to write or difficult to write? How did you find the revision process? What changes did you make during revision? Are you overall pleased with the results?
8. What grade do you deserve on this essay? Justify it.
Sources:
Richard Nordquist – http://grammar.about.com/od/developingessays/a/selfeval.htm
Christine Alfano – http://www.stanford.edu/~steener/PWR/sp02/forms/sev1.htm
Tori Haring-Smith. Brown University – http://library.cn.edu/wacn/WACforFAC/Ex3_SelfEval
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~uwc/Faculty_Resources/fac_assessing_writing_pages/fac_questions_student_evaluation.htm
Cooper & Odell. Evaluating Writing, Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1977. 143
Brooks Educationhttp://brooks-education.com/blog/?page_id=224
Alshehri 2
Abdulrahman
Alshehri
Wilson, Jennifer
English 1010-KD1
1st February 2022
I Believe in That Meritocracy in Education Should Be Reviewed
Is Meritocracy That Meritocracy in Education Should Be Reviewed? Meritocracy That is a system where people are rewarded and promoted based on their merits (Kuppens et al. 438). Under a meritocratic system, individuals who meet the set standards benefit from the set rewards, while those who fall short of the standards miss out on the rewards and promotions. In education, meritocracy is a system that rewards and promotes students based on their academic merits (Kuppens et al. 438). Students who meet certain set thresholds are promoted to the next levels of learning, such as college. I believe that there is a need to reconsider and replace meritocracy in education because meritocracy is based on intelligence, which is inherited and not developed, and it disproportionately affects minority groups.
In recent times meritocracy has been coming under scrutiny because of the failure –perceived or otherwise- of education systems to ensure a level playing field for all students. For many years, societies have accepted meritocracy as the ideal reward and promotion system. The idea that a person is rewarded based on their effort sounds like a noble one. Even in the face of the college admission scandals that rocked the country, advocates still passionately defended the idea of meritocracy College admissions scandals revealed how wealthy parents can manipulate the system in favor of getting their children admitted to colleges of their choice rather than merit (Jaschik). Merit advocates argued that the scandal was an attack on merit rather than a failure of the system. I had experience with some universities I summed up all the requirements for being a student there, but they changed their mind because some students would not be accepted, so they changed the requirements for all international students in favor of other students, so they can be accepted. However, lately, criticism has been leveled against the system of meritocracy itself. There have been extreme suggestions that college admissions should be based on a lottery system. Then there is also a rash of books that have objected to the idea that society should be aiming for academic achievements. Some of these books have very revealing titles, The Tyranny of Merit, The Meritocracy Trap, and The Cult of Smart. The majority of people who strongly object to meritocracy believe it promotes the status quo by creating advantages for those who are already at the top to remain there. They also see meritocracy as an obstacle placed in the paths of those who are at the bottom of the pyramid to climb up, and for me I strongly agree with this objection. [SH2] Most of these attacks revolve around certain premises. The first one is that intelligence is not equally spread and is genetic. The argument here is that since how intelligent an individual is beyond their control; it is unfair to determine the course of one’s life. The argument about intelligence is backed by science which states that 50% of the intelligence measured by IQ is inherited. It is also clear that intelligence varies from person to person.
Another argument is that education cannot fundamentally change intelligence (DeBoer 18). Because the personality you will live with whole life is depending on the life experiences you have been through not on the academic achievement This bold claim is made by is advanced by author Fredrik DeBoer who authored the book Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice. Meritocracy is often used to sort people based on their intelligence which is measured in terms of academic achievement. It is unfair that students must be sorted according to their inherited abilities and cannot do much about them (Forbes).
While students are sorted out based on their academic performance in school, it has been determined that out-of-school factors play a bigger role in their academic success than school factors. Education, just like healthcare, is a basic human right. Yet both, along with others, continue to be dogged by issues of inequality and access. When people say that education is an equalizer, it is inaccurate. It can be argued that education in its current meritocratic promotes the status quo and even widens the gap between the fortunate and less fortunate members of society. The representation of minority groups in college continues to be low while that of majority groups continues to grow. This is not by chance (Wong). The education system built upon meritocracy is stacked against people who belong to minority groups and those who come from poor backgrounds. As discussed earlier, school factors affect academic performance more than school factors. Some of the out-of-school factors that determine academic success include the economic status of a student’s family, the influence of parents, preparation for school, and mental and physical health. Most if not all of these factors work against students who come from minority groups.
Students from minority groups often come from impoverished families that struggle to meet their basic needs. This was brought into focus during the pandemic when schools were forced to rely on remote learning. Many students from poor backgrounds suffered, and their learning experience was not the same as that of students from well-off backgrounds. [SH3] It is the same with the influence of parents as many parents of such students did not get a proper education themselves, which limits their influence on their children’s education. Students from minority groups are also often unprepared for school. The mental and physical health of these students is also at risk due to their living experiences and the neighborhoods to which they belong. In addition, I had a bad experience when I was in Sudan. I went there with my father for work, but what I saw there was a surprise and a pity because they are suffering to study before COVID-19, and the walk for 3-4 miles daily to get to the school. Do you think people in this class in the society would have the ability to study online? Unfortunately, the main services of the life such as electricity or a safe home. All this shows that students from difficult backgrounds must surmount far more challenges than their counterparts from well-off families. These obstacles directly affect these students’ abilities to excel in their academics. As such, they come undone [SH4] by a meritocratic education system that punishes them for factors beyond their control. It can be argued that in a meritocratic system of education, disadvantaged learners have already lost the war before they face their first battle.
News of the college admissions scandal shocked the country because of the callous nature of how the wealthy can use their wealth and influence in such a brazen way to rig a system. However, it is not far-fetched to say that the education system has always been rigged in favor of the wealthy, and a meritocratic system continues to propagate the rigged system. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds engage as mere participants in a competition they can never win. There is always an exception to the rule, and once in a while, a few students from disadvantaged backgrounds will defy the odds and excel in school to secure places in college. However, those anomalies do not tell the wider story of a system rigged against its counterparts.
In my opinion, if I may have the power to change this system, I would put the skills instead of the degree you have for qualifying in jobs. It has already been determined that schools can only do so much in improving an individual’s intelligence. It has also been proven that out-of-school factors will affect academic performance more than school factors. Meritocracy in its current form in education is an injustice to disadvantaged students. While there is no ready substitute or solution for it, I believe that there is a need to reconsider meritocracy in education to replace it with a fairer system or develop a variation that is not unjust. [SH7] Now is the time to begin the conversation.
Works Cited
DeBoer, Fredrik. The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice. All Points Books, an Imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2020.
“Inside Higher Ed.” Dozens Indicted in Alleged Massive Case of Admissions Fraud, www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/03/13/dozens-indicted-alleged-massive-case-admissions-fraud.
Kuppens, Toon, et al. “Educationism and the Irony of Meritocracy: Negative Attitudes of Higher Educated People towards the Less Educated.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 76, 2018, pp. 429–447., doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2017.11.001.
Wong, Billy. “By Chance or by Plan?: The Academic Success of Nontraditional Students in Higher Education.” AERA Open, vol. 4, no. 2, 2018, p. 233285841878219., doi:10.1177/2332858418782195.
Wexler, Natalie. “We Can’t Debate ‘Meritocracy’ When Our Education System Stifles so Much Merit.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 11 Jan. 2021,
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