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

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

meditating in the middle of his visit, he asked us to write down anything that came to our mind such as a poem or a song or something like that. After we wrote for a few minutes, he led us through more meditation and then told us to write again; this time we were to write down how what we had written the first time made us feel about ourselves. Some people did not take the exercise seriously or did not get anything out of it; however, I gained a great deal from this experience with the meditation. This activity also has been placed under the Process Work because it too helped me add more to my WILTBY essay than I thought I was able to. It helped me tell my reader about a part of my life that I had not before thought to add. Through the writing and reflecting during the meditation with David, I constructed a poem, Whats it Like to be me? in order to add a deeper component to my essay. Overall, I feel that this essay was my most successful essay because it truly was a fun and interesting essay to write, and I put a lot of effort into my drafts. The next section that I chose to organize together is the one that is centered around my annotated bibliography. There are not any more artifacts to go with this piece that I have added; however, I felt that it was important enough in my process to add to my portfolio. The annotated bibliography turned out to be so much more important to my research essay than I had initially thought. This piece helped me to shape my inquiry question in that I decided that, with the information I was finding, I could pose a question that so many people were talking about, and it made me realize the relevance my question had to what is happening in real life. The annotated bibliography forced me to look for sources that would be credible and that would support

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

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

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.