What the Six Points Actually Buy

The task

You are given one poem, usually between fourteen and forty lines, and a prompt of two or three sentences. The prompt always names something to analyse — an attitude, a relationship, a complex understanding — and then asks how the poet uses literary elements and techniques to convey it. You have roughly forty minutes.

The scoring: three rows, six points

Row A — Thesis (0-1). One point for a defensible interpretation that responds to the prompt. Not a restatement of the prompt, not a summary, not a list of devices.

Row B — Evidence and Commentary (0-4). Four points, and the only row with real range. Two points for evidence with weak or uneven explanation; three for consistent explanation; four for evidence from across the poem with commentary that explains how each choice supports the thesis.

Row C — Sophistication (0-1). One point, awarded sparingly, for a genuinely complex reading — most often for recognising a tension in the poem rather than smoothing it over.

What the shape of the rubric tells you

Row B is worth four times Row A. Ten minutes spent polishing an introduction can buy you at most one point. Ten minutes spent writing one more body paragraph with real commentary can buy you two. Readers score what is on the page, in the order the rubric lists it — but they are not scoring elegance. They are scoring whether the explanation is there.