engl-portfolio essay- final draft
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Portfolio Essay
My portfolio that I have created on my Weebly site demonstrates my effort that I
have put forth in this English course, and it also showcases some of my best work along
with examples and evidence of how my writing has grown throughout the course of this
semester. Having the experience of being in this English class, I have had the
opportunity to change my thinking about writing and how it should be done. It exposed
me to different types of genres and made me feel more comfortable in the manner in
which I compose my writing. The way in which I have organized my course portfolio
reflects the process that I went through when writing the multiple drafts of each of my
essays, and it also shows the activities and feedback that really influenced my thinking
about my writing and how I created the final polished drafts of each of my major
assignments. First of all, I placed all of the final drafts of all of my pieces under one of
the tabs so that my final, edited, and finished work could all be displayed in one place.
The rest of my work is organized basically by each essay that I completed along with all
of the artifacts which have supplemented my writing process to produce my final copies
of the pieces.
Although the WILTBY essay was one of the required pieces of the portfolio, I also
used this essay as a part of my Process Work along with several other items in
different areas which are related to the WILTBY essay and my process of creating a
final draft of this piece. The draft that I used in the process work section is my
handwritten first draft with comments from my group members and also from myself
after reading my essay over again during the group workshop. I feel like that I received
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very helpful feedback particularly on this first essay. The questions that I wrote for
revision while reading over my essay aided me in the process of revising to give more
detail in what I was saying to my audience, and they helped me get more of a readers
view on my own paper. The feedback from my group members was also very helpful
when it came to my revision process because they also posed questions that I had not
even considered before. They gave me a reader so that I would know if my writing was
effective or if I needed to head in a different direction with my voice. On this particular
essay, my group members helped me by letting me know that the approach that I was
attempting to take was not having the effect on the reader that I was hoping it was going
to. I was attempting to let the reader see how I thought by listing things in a very long
list, such as the things I am made of, but the comments that I received made me see
that I needed to break them up a bit and talk more about each element that I had listed.
I had not had a reader for my writing except for teachers who just edited the papers for
punctuation and sentence structures and things such as this. This brings me to another
section of the portfolio that is represented, the Responses category. I placed the
WILTBY essay responses that I gave and received in this portion of the portfolio
because I felt that they were very important components which contributed to my growth
in my writing and in the course as a whole. The comments helped me add things to my
essay in order to help my reader really understand what it is like to be me in my life right
at this time. Some specific comments which greatly aided in the final writing of this
essay are, I am not following this sentence, consider rewording, and How could you
slow down in a few places and really explain? My WILTBY essay was also
supplemented in part by the visit by David Siedel to our classroom. While we were
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my research question. It also made the process of writing my research paper easier
because I had somewhere to refer to while I was tying in my opinions and thoughts with
the voices of the other sources I had found. Looking through the sources, while
deciding which of them I would actually be using in my research essay or to form my
own opinion, I gained a more clear understanding of the sources and of what the
conversation was that was going on already before I entered it. The sources just listed
on a page helps a little when writing a paper, but when there are annotations that go
along with the sources, it is easier to decide which information will go in which part of
the essay. Also, when it is going to be a while before you start something that you will
use the sources for, such as the research paper in our class, it is best to leave yourself
notes so that you do not completely forget everything that you have learned about the
subject. The annotated bibliography assignment was a very beneficial to the research
portion of my process of completing the argumentative research essay on my topic of
government and food regulation. Although this assignment was not one of the most
major ones that we completed during the course, it still played a major role in my writing
process.
I have set aside a separate page just to show what I have learned throughout the
course and how I have learned those things along the way. This page consists of the
Daily Entries portion of the portfolio requirements and the Artifact portion as well.
The fish activity that we completed for a warm-up activity along with the free writing
activity based on the question, What is good writing? opened my eyes in a way to a
new kind of writing. After we discussed the meaning of these two assignments, I had a
better understanding of how writing is in the real world compared to how I was taught to
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write when I was in high school and even in lower grades. I learned from these
activities that there is not really a set form or a correct way to write something as I had
previously been made to believe so that I could write the right way in order to get a
good grade on a paper or on a test. From these I gained insight into more of the art
form of writing rather than writing in a uniform fashion just so that I can pass an exam to
get a grade and then never think again about the piece that I wrote. I have learned that
good writers have readers and that it is important for me to also read my own writing
myself so that I can change things that I did not notice before. I learned that with a
reader, I get useful feedback from the very ones who I am trying to convince in my
writing, and I need to know how I am coming across to them and if I am being effective
or not. The blogger assignment is also under this category. The blogger was a very
new thing for me, and I really enjoyed using it to reflect on my work and also to think
about what my next move would be in regards to the course. While completing these
assignments, I often found that if I did have a question about my writing or about my
topic or anything of the sort, I would end up answering my own questions before I was
finished with the blog post. It was a very helpful tool in reflecting on what I was doing in
the different pieces we were working on because the questions that had to be answered
made me actually think about what I was doing and also think about why I was doing it.
The final section that I have organized in the portfolio is centered on the 3-Sided
assignment. The 3-Sided essay is in the portion, Process Work in the portfolio. I have
to say that this assignment was the most helpful in preparing to write the first draft of my
argumentative research essay. The 3-Sided essay helped me to organize the three
groups that I was going to use for the conversation that was going on in the professional
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world. It made it much easier to decide upon what my voice would be in regards to the
subject and how I would enter into the conversation that was already going on. The
visual aid was also a part of the 3-Sided assignment requirements, and it is under the
Responses portion of the portfolio. I chose to use this piece because at first, I took the
wrong approach to the assignment. I created pictures to go along with the groups that I
had chosen to use in my research essay. When we were work-shopping those
assignments in class, Shane made a comment on my paper about how I needed to not
just make fun of the groups with the pictures, but rather share the viewpoint of the
group. This response really helped me on the visual and in my writing because it
helped me to realize that I needed to rearrange some things so that I was actually giving
viewpoints and not criticizing people.
Overall, I have learned a lot in this class from learning when and when not to add
my voice into an essay to giving feedback to other people that will help to make their
writing better as well. I feel like this course has been very beneficial to me in so many
different ways. I believe that I deserve about a B in this course because most of the
time, I have had my work in by the due date and I have effectively work-shopped as well
as taken the feedback I am given and revise my works to make them better; however, I
have gotten papers in late once or twice and have been absent several times. Overall, I
feel that I have performed slightly above average in the class.