The Diagnostic Essay

Black Mamba

English 111

Professor McBratney

The Diagnostic Essay

The one thing that I wish to achieve in this course to better my writing skills is to be able to develop my point more clearly. I feel as though I often have great ideas but cannot put them down on paper as well as I can think of them in my head. I usually try to organize my thoughts and then write them down in the essay, but sometimes this gets my sidetracked and off topic from my original ideas or stance.

I believe my main problem is that I try too hard to make my reader understand my point. This is caused be over wording many of my sentences. When I’m having a tough time getting my point across I also begin to use too many big words. Instead of writing fluidly, I try to beef up my essays with savvy words that do not always help me, but in fact hurt my essay. So I definitely want to keep an eye on writing naturally, like I speak, instead of writing with a ‘studder’ so to speak.

Another pitfall to my writing when I’m having trouble explaining myself is I become very repetitious. I say the same thing in about four or five similar sentences. This leads to the organization of my essay to suffer. I’ll have a sentence in the second paragraph that will be seen in the fourth paragraph with a few modifications. I think it is because I believe my reader forgets what I’m trying to say, so I feel it necessary to repeat myself. Also, I believe this happens because of overusing vocabulary and I lose track of what I’m trying to convey.