Diagnostic Writing Assessment Prompt
Directions: You will have 55 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life.”
-- King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Explain King’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 1: What’s Next? Thinking About Life After High School
Essential Question(s):
Directions: You will have 55 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“Society needs a mechanism for sorting out its more intelligent members from its less intelligent ones, just as a track team needs a mechanism (such as a stopwatch) for sorting out the faster athletes from the slower ones. Society wants to identify intelligent people early on so that it can funnel them into careers that maximize their talents. It wants to get the most out of its human resources. College is a process that is sufficiently multifaceted and fine-grained to do this.”
-- Louis Menand “Live and Learn”
Explain Menand’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 2: Racial Profiling
Essential Question:
Directions: You will have 55 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“We offer here a new (and admittedly speculative) theory of the benefits of stereotyping that is also of the “presently adaptive” variety: Stereotyping achieves the desirable effect of allowing us to rapidly perceive total strangers as distinctive individuals...when our minds automatically activate all these stereotypes all at once, we get a rich, complex perception of the person, even though the passerby we are contemplating is a total stranger.”
-- Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald “On Stereotypes”
Explain Banaji and Greenwald’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with their analysis. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 3: Into the Wild
Essential Question:
Directions: You will have 55 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“[Dear]Ron,
I really enjoy all the help you have given me and the times that we spent together. I hope that you will not be too depressed by our parting. It may be a very long time before we see each other again. But providing that I get through this Alaskan Deal in one piece you will be hearing from me again in the future. I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.”
-- Chris McCandless from Into the Wild
Explain the McCandless’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the quote. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Guiding Questions: The following questions will help guide you in the writing of your essay.
1. Analyze Chris McCandless’s personal beliefs about the world in general, and explain whether or not he was justified in abandoning his comfortable life to go into the wild. Explain three of his personal beliefs and discuss if you support or do not support his beliefs.
2. Explain how Chris McCandless’s relationship with “others” affected his decisions after high school. Choose three individuals that he meets. Describe direct and indirect characterization. Explain how these individuals effect McCandless’ life and how he affected their lives.
3. To what extent is community(contact with others) essential to happiness and survival?
Unit 4: Good Food/Bad Food
Essential Question:
Directions: You will have 50 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
"As Americans add pounds, critics are increasingly blaming the fast-food industry. Teenagers have filed lawsuits blaming McDonald’s for their health problems, and a public health group in California has asked the governor to declare childhood obesity a state of emergency. But parents—not the fast food companies, not the government—are in the best position to fight the epidemic of overweight children. Parents are responsible for teaching healthy eating and exercise habits. Parents are to blame if they let their kids eat unhealthy foods and sit in front of the television or computer for hours at a time. We have laws against parents leaving a loaded weapon where children can find and use it to hurt themselves or others. It’s time to get parents to take the same responsibility to protect their children from unhealthy foods and lack of exercise."
-- Adapted from Daniel Weintraub’s “The Battle Against Fast Food Begins in the Home”
Explain Weintraub’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position by referring to the passage and providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 5: The Value of Life
Essential Question:
Directions: You will have 50 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“Today’s adolescents have no less need than those of previous generations to learn empathetic skills, to think about their values and identity, and to manage and express feelings. They need time to discover themselves, time to think. But technology, put in the service of always-on communication and telegraphic speed and brevity, has changed the rules of engagement with all this. When is downtime, when is stillness? The text-drive world of rapid response does not make self-reflection im[possible but does little to cultivate it. When interchanges are reformatted for the small screen and reduced to the emotional shorthand of emoticons, there are necessary simplifications.”
-- Sherry Turkle “Growing up Tethered”
Explain Turkle’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position by referring to the passage and providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 6: Bring a Text You Like to Class (Zoot Suit)
Essential Question:
Unit 7: Brave New World
Essential Question:
Directions: You will have 45 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.”
-- John the Savage from Brave New World
Explain John the Savage’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position by referring to the passage and providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 8: Language, Gender, & Culture
Essential Question:
Directions: You will have 45 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“...Men and women tend to perform differently on certain tests. Men do better with maths, mental rotation, and embedded pictures, and women do better with verbal memory and fluency and with recalling where objects were located. These differences need to be explained. There are three possibilities. One possibility is that men and women are equally good at the skills in question, but they just perform differently on tests. Another possibility is that there are biological differences that have an impact on cognition [and behavior]. A third possibility is that cultural variables lead men and women to think somewhat differently.”
-- Jesse J. Prinz “Gender and Geometry”
Explain the Prinz’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Directions: You will have 55 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life.”
-- King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Explain King’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 1: What’s Next? Thinking About Life After High School
Essential Question(s):
- What are my post secondary options?
- What are colleges and the work force looking for?
Directions: You will have 55 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“Society needs a mechanism for sorting out its more intelligent members from its less intelligent ones, just as a track team needs a mechanism (such as a stopwatch) for sorting out the faster athletes from the slower ones. Society wants to identify intelligent people early on so that it can funnel them into careers that maximize their talents. It wants to get the most out of its human resources. College is a process that is sufficiently multifaceted and fine-grained to do this.”
-- Louis Menand “Live and Learn”
Explain Menand’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 2: Racial Profiling
Essential Question:
- What is profiling?
- What impact does profiling have?
Directions: You will have 55 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“We offer here a new (and admittedly speculative) theory of the benefits of stereotyping that is also of the “presently adaptive” variety: Stereotyping achieves the desirable effect of allowing us to rapidly perceive total strangers as distinctive individuals...when our minds automatically activate all these stereotypes all at once, we get a rich, complex perception of the person, even though the passerby we are contemplating is a total stranger.”
-- Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald “On Stereotypes”
Explain Banaji and Greenwald’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with their analysis. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 3: Into the Wild
Essential Question:
- How do our relationships with our parents/guardians/society/others shape us as individuals?
Directions: You will have 55 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“[Dear]Ron,
I really enjoy all the help you have given me and the times that we spent together. I hope that you will not be too depressed by our parting. It may be a very long time before we see each other again. But providing that I get through this Alaskan Deal in one piece you will be hearing from me again in the future. I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.”
-- Chris McCandless from Into the Wild
Explain the McCandless’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the quote. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Guiding Questions: The following questions will help guide you in the writing of your essay.
1. Analyze Chris McCandless’s personal beliefs about the world in general, and explain whether or not he was justified in abandoning his comfortable life to go into the wild. Explain three of his personal beliefs and discuss if you support or do not support his beliefs.
2. Explain how Chris McCandless’s relationship with “others” affected his decisions after high school. Choose three individuals that he meets. Describe direct and indirect characterization. Explain how these individuals effect McCandless’ life and how he affected their lives.
3. To what extent is community(contact with others) essential to happiness and survival?
Unit 4: Good Food/Bad Food
Essential Question:
- To what extent should food policies shape our food choices?
Directions: You will have 50 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
"As Americans add pounds, critics are increasingly blaming the fast-food industry. Teenagers have filed lawsuits blaming McDonald’s for their health problems, and a public health group in California has asked the governor to declare childhood obesity a state of emergency. But parents—not the fast food companies, not the government—are in the best position to fight the epidemic of overweight children. Parents are responsible for teaching healthy eating and exercise habits. Parents are to blame if they let their kids eat unhealthy foods and sit in front of the television or computer for hours at a time. We have laws against parents leaving a loaded weapon where children can find and use it to hurt themselves or others. It’s time to get parents to take the same responsibility to protect their children from unhealthy foods and lack of exercise."
-- Adapted from Daniel Weintraub’s “The Battle Against Fast Food Begins in the Home”
Explain Weintraub’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position by referring to the passage and providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 5: The Value of Life
Essential Question:
- Is one life more valuable, or worth more, than another life?
Directions: You will have 50 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“Today’s adolescents have no less need than those of previous generations to learn empathetic skills, to think about their values and identity, and to manage and express feelings. They need time to discover themselves, time to think. But technology, put in the service of always-on communication and telegraphic speed and brevity, has changed the rules of engagement with all this. When is downtime, when is stillness? The text-drive world of rapid response does not make self-reflection im[possible but does little to cultivate it. When interchanges are reformatted for the small screen and reduced to the emotional shorthand of emoticons, there are necessary simplifications.”
-- Sherry Turkle “Growing up Tethered”
Explain Turkle’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position by referring to the passage and providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 6: Bring a Text You Like to Class (Zoot Suit)
Essential Question:
- Historically, how has marginalized and criminalization impacted youth?
- (According to Luis Valdez, in Zoot Suit) What conflicts do marginalized groups face in trying to form an identity resistant to hegemony?
- How is this relevant to society today?
Unit 7: Brave New World
Essential Question:
- What might have been Huxley’s purpose in writing Brave New World?
- What does Brave New World say about the world we live in?
Directions: You will have 45 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.”
-- John the Savage from Brave New World
Explain John the Savage’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position by referring to the passage and providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Unit 8: Language, Gender, & Culture
Essential Question:
- In a culture where we are bombarded with ideas of “what we should be.” How does one form an identity that remains true and authentic for her/himself?
- How are everyday lives shaped by gender and gender expectations?
Directions: You will have 45 minutes to plan and write an essay on the topic assigned below. Before you begin writing, read the passage carefully and plan what you will say. Your essay should be as well organized and as carefully written as you can make it.
“...Men and women tend to perform differently on certain tests. Men do better with maths, mental rotation, and embedded pictures, and women do better with verbal memory and fluency and with recalling where objects were located. These differences need to be explained. There are three possibilities. One possibility is that men and women are equally good at the skills in question, but they just perform differently on tests. Another possibility is that there are biological differences that have an impact on cognition [and behavior]. A third possibility is that cultural variables lead men and women to think somewhat differently.”
-- Jesse J. Prinz “Gender and Geometry”
Explain the Prinz’s argument and discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with his analysis. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.