Students grade essays

What I did in my TG1 class at Juventus was to ask the students to write an essay on an important experience in their life.Afterwards, the students exchanged papers and graded a classmate's work using the method/scale described in the attached document.  (I based this method on my own experience and a knowledge of the Cambridge exam essay grading schemes and what we used to do at the Fachhochchule HWZ).  3 aspects are graded:-- English Basics: essentially grammar, spelling, word-order, punctuation.  This has a maximum value of 4.0-- Organization-Content-Style:  This has a maximum value of 1.0-- Language Level: Also a maximum value of 1.0. At this point, we used the GER Levels to evaluate essentially how close the level was to C1/C2 speakers. The resulting arithmetical sum gave a value.  I compared this with my intuitive sense of what the essay was "worth".  The results were actually very good, and it sensitized the students to both the GER Levels and how to grade an essay -- which should help them in their own future writings.  Of course, this was a one-time thing so far, and I plan on repeating it over the course of the students' gymi careers.