English Composition 1

Diagnostic Essay: Analysis of Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron"

Due Date

Monday, January 14 (by the end of the class period)

The Diagnostic Essay: Purpose and Expectations

The diagnostic essay allows me to offer you feedback on your writing at the beginning of the course. Completing the diagnostic essay is a required part of the course (the essay counts toward the number of essays that students must write in the course), but the diagnostic essay will not receive a grade. However, I will collect and evaluate the diagnostic essay just as I will evaluate the other essays you will submit for the course, giving you suggestions that you can apply to your other essays. The diagnostic essay is a good way for you to receive feedback on your writing early in the semester without having to worry about a grade, and it also gives me an idea of how much you know about writing an essay at the beginning of the course. In fact, the essay is called "diagnostic" because it allows me to provide a "diagnosis" of your writing at the beginning of the course, a "diagnosis" being "a critical analysis of the nature of something."

You will have at least two weeks to work on each of your graded essays, plenty of time to plan, pre-write, write, revise, and proofread, major aspects of the writing process that are vital to writing a good essay. However, you do not have as much time to write your diagnostic essay. I don't expect any literary masterpieces, but I will be looking for the basics:

an introduction and conclusion,
a thesis statement,
relevant topic sentences,
body paragraphs focused on one main idea each,
a logical progression of ideas,
ideas developed and supported with specific details,
a clear presentation of your ideas,
sentences free or almost free from errors, and
at least 500 words.

Don't worry if these expectations sound intimidating; just do the best that you can. You will read a lot of information about strengthening your writing throughout the semester, but if you feel you need to review the basics before you write the diagnostic essay, you could read the web page Evaluation and Grading Criteria for Essays.

The Assignment

In an essay, write an analysis and interpretation of Sarah Orne Jewett's short story "A White Heron" that will help readers understand and appreciate the story.

(Just click any of the links to "A White Heron" on this page to see the story.)

The specific approach to the story is up to you, but you should focus on analyzing and interpreting the story. That is, you should draw conclusions about the meaning of the story and then support those ideas with specific facts from the story.

You can assume that your audience has already read "A White Heron," so you should not just summarize it. Instead, try to focus on writing an analysis and interpretation of the story. Your essay should help readers understand and appreciate the meaning conveyed by Jewett's story. Yes, we know what happens in the story, but what are we supposed to get out of it?

Below are a few questions you could ask about the story to help you generate ideas to support and develop in your essay:

How would you describe Sylvia? What characteristics about her stand out?
How would you describe Sylvia's relationship with nature?
How does Sylvia feel about the young man?
What is the major conflict that Sylvia faces in the story?
Is there any symbolism involved in Sylvia's climbing of the tree near the end of the story?
Could the white heron be a symbol of Sylvia herself? How are the two similar?
There are many references to darkness and light in the story. Is there some symbolism here?

Your essay should not just answer many questions, so it probably would not be a good idea to try to answer all of the questions above in your essay. Instead, focus on just three or four major ideas and go into depth supporting and developing those particular ideas.

Please do not use any sources, such as interpretations of the story written by other scholars, as you write your essay. There is a good chance that your essay will include plagiarism if you use sources. We will use sources later in the course, but, for this essay, please rely only on your own ideas about the story. Do not type the title of the story into a search engine and read what other people say about the story!

Try for a length of at least 500 words.

Tips

One of the first things you should consider when you begin working on a short essay is how you will divide your essay into different body paragraphs. You will need a minimum of three body paragraphs, along with an introduction and a conclusion, and each body paragraph should be focused on a different, but related, idea.

In general, each body paragraph should be at least half of a page long, so it's a good idea to use no more that three or four body paragraphs for your essay, for a total of five or six paragraphs (including the introduction and conclusion).
Each body paragraph should begin with a topic sentence that clearly and specifically identifies the main point of the paragraph, and you should remain focused on developing only this main point in the rest of the paragraph. You should use specifics from Jewett's story, including quotations, to help you support and develop the idea throughout the rest of the paragraph.

A one-sentence thesis statement should appear in the introduction of your essay, and the thesis statement usually appears as the last sentence of the introduction. The easiest way to formulate the thesis statement is by combining all of the main ideas from your topic sentences into just one sentence.

Success in this course depends much on how well you read and understand information and how well you apply this information to your writing. To help give me a sense of how well everyone is reading, understanding, and applying the information for this first essay assignment, I will give special attention to the two aspects of your essay explained below:

The diagnostic essay should be written in a formal writing voice. Among other things, this means that you should avoid first-person references (the use of "I," "me," "my," etc.), so you should not use phrases such as "I think that," "I believe that," or "in my opinion." Readers will know that the ideas you present in your essay are your own because you are the writer of the essay, so, as you write and revise your essay, you should delete any first-person references. The Web page Formal Writing Voice provides additional information about maintaining a formal voice. I will be paying special attention to how well you avoid the use of the first person.

You will need to use quotations from "A White Heron" to help you support and develop your ideas, and every quotation should be integrated into one of your own sentences. In other words, you should make every quotation a part of one of your own sentences and should not have any quotation standing all by itself in your essay. We have an unnamed narrator (or storyteller) for "A White Heron," so in some cases, you could simply put the narrator says (followed by a comma) before quotations to make the quotations a part of your own sentences. If a character is speaking, though, you should indicate the character's name, as in Sylvia says or the young man says. Other ways to integrate quotations into your own sentences, and the correct punctuation to use when punctuation is necessary, are explained on the Integrating Quotations into Sentences Web page. I will be paying special attention to how well you integrate quotations into your own sentences.

The Writing Resources Web page present links to a lot of information that you could consult as you are working on this assignment, but be careful not to be overwhelmed by trying to read and understand all of this information now. The Diagnostic Essay is an example of your writing before we cover all of that information about writing essays.

Preparing Your Essay

Your essay should be word processed and double space. Type your name, the instructor's name, your class, and the date in the upper left corner of the first page (as illustrated on The Proper Format for Essays web page), and give your essay a title (different from the title of Jewett's story).

Save your essay to disk or to your network drive (it's always a good idea to have a backup copy of your work).

When you are finished, please print your essay and turn it in.

Questions?

Wow. There is a lot of information to think about for this assignment! Of course, do your best on the diagnostic essay, but it is important to keep in mind that the essay will not be graded. More than anything else, the diagnostic essay is a way for you to get a sense of your writing abilities as we begin the course.

And, as always, please ask if you have any questions!