This section of the National Forage Curriculum is designed to help students evaluate their writing skills. Good writing skills are advantageous in all types of jobs and yet few students are trained to evaluate their own writing. The following checklist will help students to:

  • determine the grade level of their writing, and
  • check their writing for mechanics of better writing.

In order to have a writing sample to use, the student should write at least 100 words on the role of forages in the world. It may prove helpful for students to write this paragraph at the beginning of the course and then again at the end of the course to compare both their writing skills as well as their attitudes towards forages.

When the writing sample is prepared, the student may use the following steps to evaluate their own writing.

  1. Beginning with the first word of your sample, count out 100 words.
  2. How many sentences were included in the first 100 words? Do not count numbers or specific names.
  3. Count any partial sentence in the 100 words as .2, .5, or .7 of the completed sentence.
  4. Count the number of syllables that were used in the 100 words.
  5. Use the following chart to determine the grade level readability of your sample. (Microsoft Word User has a built-in evaluation for document readability under the grammar command in the tools menu.)

     

    •  If you have 126 - 150 syllables in more than 12 sentences your writing is at the elementary school level.

    •  If you have 126 - 150 syllables in 5 - 12 sentences your writing is at the middle or junior high school level.

    •  If you have 126 - 150 syllables in 2 - 4 sentences your writing is at the high school level.

    •  If you have 150 or more syllables in 4 - 12 sentences your writing is at the middle school level.

    •  If you have 150 or more syllables in 1 - 3 sentences your writing is at the high school level.

    •  If you have 158 syllables in more than 7 sentences your writing is at the high school level.

    •  If you have 158 syllables in 1 - 6 sentences your writing is at the college level.

    •  If you have more than 172 syllables your writing is at the college level.

    Your writing should reflect the intended audience. Use sentence length and multisyllablic words carefully to make your writing appropriate for your intended audience. The average newspaper is written at a middle school level.

  6. Check your sentences for word length. Good writing utilizes varying sentence length to retain a reader's attention.
  7. Underline the first word in each sentence. Do two or more of the sentences begin with the same word? Beginning sentences the same way is not always wise.
  8. Count the number of commas, colons, semicolons, exclamation points and question marks in the 100 words. Punctuation marks, when used correctly, can provide the reader with the inflection and voice that writing needs to really communicate.
  9. Count the number of times you used the word "I" in your sample. Are there better ways to write these sentences without an abundant use of I?
  10. Count the number of adjectives in your sample. Adjectives are words that describe nouns and the clever use of adjectives can develop very colorful writing that the reader can mentally visualize.

Every writer can improve their skills and every sample can be improved and revised. The above list is a start for students to begin evaluating their own writing. But this list does not evaluate if your ideas are clear and convincing to a reader. Having others read your writing and hearing their comments is also helpful and this opportunity will be made available to you in this course.