Writing a Diagnostic Essay

Writing a Diagnostic EssayA diagnostic essay is an essay that has a thesis statement and examination questions, which act as a framework in order to gauge and assess the student's mastery of the concepts and ideas presented in the essay. The purpose of the essay is to determine whether the student's knowledge is adequate for the academic requirements of the course at hand, and whether or not it meets the expectations of the professor.The diagnostic essay can also serve as an informal or formal assessment of your ability to think critically, with the final evaluation of the student. Since you are making the critical evaluation on yourself, you are bound to go through a period of self-evaluation when going through the essay. In order to provide yourself with some real examples of how you can do this, read on.The diagnostic essay is always best done under two conditions. The first condition is when you are already fully prepared to write the paper, and the second condition is when you a re researching the course material before the essay is due. It is important to understand what these conditions are, so that you will know what to prepare for and what to avoid. If you have already planned out your topic before the assignment is due, your task is already made much easier. You should remember to re-research your topic in advance of the assignment date so that your knowledge is up to date.The second condition that applies to any diagnostic essay is that you prepare yourself with as much information as possible. To give you some examples, try taking notes about the topics discussed in your course textbooks, but keep in mind that your notes should be the exact information provided by the course text itself. Also, make sure that you are fully aware of the definition of the terms and concepts used in the material that you plan to use in your essay. Some examples of these would be 'does DNA have an alphabet?'Now that you have gone through your notes, you are ready to move to the next stage: writing the exam paper. You need to decide on the objectives of the essay, the key ideas to cover and the main concepts. Once you have figured out what you want to write, start brainstorming ideas and draw connections between them.Your diagnostic essay should be well-researched, yet simple and clear. Do not write a paper that is difficult to understand, or unclear and confusing. Remember that the reason for having the essay in the first place is to achieve an objective, which is to learn something new. Therefore, the primary goal of the essay is to be simple and clear, so that the student can remember what was covered in the essay.You need to note that the written essay can be very different from the one given in the classroom. The classroom will not have the professional appearance of an essay, nor the workmanlike tone. Furthermore, the diagnostic essay will usually be more targeted towards the use of the essay format and the concepts covered in the paper, rather than being simply about the information itself.Finally, one thing to note is that while it is fine to make reference to the textbook while writing the diagnostic essay, it is not necessary. Just keep in mind that the exam paper should be able to stand on its own merit. For example, while you might have been reviewing your notes, the exam paper could have been written based on a completely different topic that the student had no background knowledge of.