Personal Assessment Paper: Basic Writing Techniques

Personal assessment is a process of one’s evaluation of his or her activities, goal achievement, results, qualities, effectiveness etc. A self-assessment is a modern trend in educational institutions as it develops student’s responsibility for their work, ability to assess their results objectively and motivate for effective education and self-improvement. Additionally, self-assessment benefits colleges and universities as it saves time, which has been previously spent on evaluation and grading, for other more useful educational activities. In case you need to write a personal assessment paper you need to be aware of the assessment writing technique that is the same despite the type of paper you select.

Rule 1. Understanding the tasks.

• Before you start you need to understand your assignment fully and what you are expected to write about in the personal assessment paper. Check provided instructions carefully and clarify what you have to assess:

1. It may be assessment of your academic work and achievements;
2. The assessment of writing process and successes in it is, also, often assigned.
3. You may be expected to complete the paper about your personal qualities, habits, accomplishments and goals.

• Remember that personal assessment is kind of reflection genre. Usually you are not asked to conduct the academic research but analyze certain personal points. In case you do not have enough knowledge of how to conduct this type of evaluation you will probably need to check some relevant literature. However, make sure that your paper is based on your personal experience.

Rule 2. Setting the criteria.

• If the assessment takes places it means that there must be certain standards, which we compare with the results that we obtain. The standards are connected with determined principles of assessment that are called “criteria”.
• Criteria depend on which qualities you are willing to evaluate. For example, if you are assessing your writing skills you will definitely need to select the criteria of coherence, ability of structure paper in logical manner, grammatical correctness, relevance to the topic etc.
• Remember that the effectiveness of your paper will depend on the criteria that you decide to select. This is why you should set them wisely and choose those ones, which reveal your string sides.

Rule 3. Writing awareness.

• Once you have set the criteria and understood what you are asked to write about, you need to complete a coherent text. In order to make it sound logical and not to miss a point we recommend you to make an outline.
• Divide your outline in several sections that correspond to the principles of assessment that you selected.
• Make sure that you have enough evidence: do not leave your arguments bare – each word of yours must be supported by facts.
• If you are facing difficulties in writing process consider answering the following questions:

1. What is your perception of obtaining the professional skills? Is it a specialization that you feel comfortable with?
2. Do you like or dislike the activities, which you perform in the educational process?
3. Describe the strong and weak sides of yours.
4. Do you feel that you can deal better with certain tasks than others?