STAAR English I Expository
Texas Education Agency
Student Assessment Division
April 2018
Score Point 1
The essay represents a very limited writing performance.
Organization/Progression
The organizing structure of the essay is inappropriate to the purpose or the specic
demands of the prompt. The writer uses organizational strategies that are only
marginally suited to the explanatory task, or they are inappropriate or not evident
at all. The absence of a functional organizational structure causes the essay to lack
clarity and direction.
Most ideas are generally related to the topic specied in the prompt, but the thesis
statement is missing, unclear, or illogical. The writer may fail to maintain focus on the
topic, may include extraneous information, or may shift abruptly from idea to idea,
weakening the coherence of the essay.
The writer’s progression of ideas is weak. Repetition or wordiness sometimes causes
serious disruptions in the ow of the essay. At other times the lack of transitions and
sentence-to-sentence connections causes the writer to present ideas in a random or
illogical way, making one or more parts of the essay unclear or difcult to follow.
Development of Ideas
The development of ideas is weak. The essay is ineffective because the writer uses
details and examples that are inappropriate, vague, or insufcient.
The essay is insubstantial because the writer’s response to the prompt is vague or
confused. In some cases, the essay as a whole is only weakly linked to the prompt.
In other cases, the writer develops the essay in a manner that demonstrates a lack of
understanding of the expository writing task.
Use of Language/Conventions
The writer’s word choice may be vague or limited. It reects little or no awareness
of the expository purpose and does not establish a tone appropriate to the task. The
word choice may impede the quality and clarity of the essay.
Sentences are simplistic, awkward, or uncontrolled, signicantly limiting the
effectiveness of the essay.
The writer has little or no command of sentence boundaries and spelling,
capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and usage conventions. Serious and persistent
errors create disruptions in the uency of the writing and sometimes interfere with
meaning.