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DIAGNOSTIC ESSAY

LENGTH
Make your essay as long as you can in the allotted time and still write it as well as you can. Don’t write more than about 600 words.

FORMAT
Just make sure what you write is legible. Cross outs and insertions are acceptable.

OBJECTIVES
  • To speak in a voice that is identifiably yours.
  • To determine if your placement into EN 111 is appropriate
  • To stick to your topic
  • To include some vivid details
  • To use correct sentence structure and follow the conventions of Standard Written English



SUBJECT: Choose one of the following:
  1. Most people have a particular place that means a lot to them. Sometimes it’s a balcony off the back of their house or a quiet place out in the country where they can be comfortably alone. But sometimes it is a noisier, crowded place that speaks to their identity. Describe the place that best embodies who you are and explain what makes it a good emblem of what is most central to who you are.

  2. Most of us have lost someone to death or distance, a person to whom we would want to tell one thing before they were really gone. Who is that person in your life; what would you want to say; and how would you feel different if it were possible to speak such words?

  3. In what ways are you the same as and different from other people your age who grew up in your hometown?

  4. During our last class, we assembled the image of Williams and Ditka. We found that it used some pairs of “opposites” (binaries) that carried a message about power, control, race, and gender: Black/White, Female/Male, Player/Coach, Wife/Husband, etc. Describe the binaries of the image and how they work together to carry a meaning that isn’t obvious at first.