Overview This worksheet is intended for students to use in evaluating their own writing. It's helpful not only to guide students, but to make them aware of these structures and issues in others' writing.
How Teachers Can Use This in Class
"WHY DID I GET THIS GRADE?" In understanding why students received a particular grade, working through the writing self-diagnosis is crucial for them to understand why they received a particualr grade.
PRECONFERENCE. Before a conference, students should work through this sheet and come prepared to the conference ready to discuss issues they discovered during the self-diagnosis.
The Self-Diagnosis Sheet
THESIS. Locate and highlight your thesis/position. Evaluate it. Is it weak or strong? Does it need revision? Do you have a thesis?
TRANSITIONS. Highlight your transition words. Do you have effective sentence-to-sentence transitions and paragraph-to-paragraph transitions? Are they effective or perfunctory? Can you strengthen the progression of your argument by adding or replacing transitional words? Use your “Useful Transitions” toolbox sheet.
EVIDENCE. In the margins of your body paragraphs, list your evidence. Is it general or specific? Is it varied? If the essay is a rhetorical analysis, did you focus on the two or three most important rhetorical devices? Did you tie them to the purpose of the piece?
INTRO AND CONCLUSIONS. Re-visit your introduction and conclusion. Did you enter and exit the conversation effectively? What kind of introduction did you write? Use your “Kinds of Introductions” toolbox sheet. If the essay is a rhetorical analysis, was your first paragraph a rhetorical précis? Did it include all necessary parts? Use your “Rhetorical Précis” toolbox sheet.
VERBS. Examine your verbs. Using a colored pen, highlight all verbs and eliminate weak/vague "to be" verbs. Did you use rhetorically accurate present tense verbs? Highlight all verbs that need to be revised into the present tense.
SENTENCES. Examine your sentence types. Did you vary your types of sentences? Did you use specific sentence types for rhetorical purposes?
WORDINESS. Examine your writing for unnecessary wordiness and meaningless phrases. Watch out for "fake question" words and other vague language like person, situation, different, way, situation, emotion, thing.
WEAK PARAGRAPH.Which paragraph do you consider your weakest one? Circle it in colored pen.
EVIDENCE. What evidence did you use? Was it specific? Capital letters?
EXPLANATION. How many sentences did you have for your explanation?
CREDIT: Thanks to Kathleen Fick for passing on the original information on which this was based.