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1 Jonathan Long Professor Suzanne Ingram ENGL 1101-049 29 October 2013 Portfolio Essay Coming into college, I felt like my English 1101 class was going to be just like the Honors English classes I had in high school. We were going to read literature, analyze it, and then write papers here and there following the five paragraph essay format that it seems like all high school students were adjusted to. I knew exactly how I needed to pass the class with an A. Follow the procedures strictly outlined on the assignment sheet. If you cannot fulfill one of the requirements of the assignment sheet, fill it will bullshit. The teacher has so many things on his/ her mind they will just look over it. However, my assumptions for this college course were very wrong. In fact, this English class has been very beneficial to me when it comes to opening up and writing as I feel. When I was in high school, I was the quiet type (I still kind of am). I did not participate much in class discussions and fed off of the ideas of my peers to complete my assignments. But thats because I didnt like English, as I thought I wasnt good at comprehension and writing. The format of this class did not align with my previous academic ways. We had to do something that I had never experienced before and that was reflecting on my own through blogging. These blogs required us to indulge in our own independent inquiry, ask questions, and give our thoughts about how we thing the work and our class is going. I feel as if this English course has been very beneficial to me in terms of my college career. Not only has it assured me that my writing is good

Long !2 enough and is continuing to develop, but it has also educated me more about writing in a way that is best for you. Throughout this electronic portfolio, you will find my completed works throughout this course, which includes a blog, a high school literacy narrative, midterm assignment, and a genre study. Each of these individual assignments, besides the blog, has their own page with each draft of the paper, followed by feedback and revision examples, and finally the final draft of the works near the bottom of the page. Also included is my wild card of Shitty First Drafts and two writers notebook articfacts. Some pages may have relatable images or other pieces of information that I believe are important, and will be captioned to explain their relationship to the essay being presented on the webpage. I have designed my portfolio to begin with the portfolio essay, since it explains my entire portfolio. The literacy narrative comes next because it was the first large piece written in the class, and it was my first attempt at college writing. The final pages of the portfolio include my midterm assessment, genre study, and blog. Organizing the portfolio this way shows my progression from the beginning of the course, to the end and how my writing abilities have grown. I hope you will enjoy navigating through my portfolio and feeling the course of development I have went through in this first year writing course. We began our First Year Writing course with a short and simple blog post. The purpose of this blog post was to make some inquiries about the [course] key concepts and ask questions about writing The key concepts I pointed out in my blog post is the writing process and revision, followed by risk-taking. I wanted to focus on these two concepts as they go hand in hand. I had the forthcoming knowledge that college academic writing will be far different that high school writing. I wanted to be a good writer since I know towards the end of my senior

Long !3 year of college, I would be writing dissertations and other papers and I needed to learn the writing process. You will see throughout this e-Portfolio examples of my writing process, revision, and risk-taking. Literacy Narrative The first large piece completed in this course was the Literacy Narrative. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to take an life changing experience from our high school years and reflect upon the event, and how it has led to a better understanding of our community. I felt a little intimidated by this assignment because this was something completely different then what I was accustomed to. Since a literacy narrative required me to write on more a personal level and include my feelings, dialogue, and other sensory details, I was inclined to take risks. Most of the writing that I have done in the past included the five paragraph essay and technical writing at my current job so I knew this was going to be a bit of a challenge to change from a business perspective to a now more personal and thoughtful style of writing. This type of assignment was so new to me that I needed to think. Planning what I could write about and how it has shaped my literacy required critical thinking and brainstorming. Something that really helped me was the rhetorical triangle Ms. Ingram continually referenced to. The rhetorical triangle shows how context links between the author, purpose, and the audience. These are three very important concepts to keep in mind to ensure my writing was on point. I began by writing down a brief list of events that took place in high school and then took a highlighter to highlight the bigger events. I then took each bigger event and created a circle map of ideas and key points to narrow my choices down to a final topic to write about. Although I completed all of this work in

Long !4 planning my literacy narrative, I failed to keep up with the paper and lost it amongst masses of work so this will unfortunately will not be part of my portfolio. My literacy narrative tells the story of how I became involved in the world of Information Technology and my current career. The first draft was used for me to get all of my thoughts down on the paper and obtain feedback from my peers as to how I could spice things up. This is where the reading of my wildcard Shitty First Drafts and my Reader Response Letter came into play. Shitty first drafts taught me a very important lesson when it comes to writing. This piece explains, The first draft is the childs draft, where you let it all pour out and let it romp all over the placeknowing that you can shape it later. This quote gave me the motivation to begin this writing with an open mind. To simply let my mind flow and tell the story of my experiences. The first draft was okay. It included very few sensory details about how I was feeling. It also lacked dialogue in many places, but it gave me the backbone of my story and allowed a lot of areas for revision and learning. Feedback from both my peers and my instructor included add more dialogue and use more details. I was stumped to know that while I was in my small group, my group members were interested to know more about my story and it inspired me to go back and add more dialogue and sensory detail. As you will see in my final draft at the bottom of the page on the Literacy Narrative page, Ive lengthened the paper from these additions. For instance, on page two I took the paragraph beginning with The first week and talked more about what I was feeling, adding lines such as As my eyes scanned across the office, I had a curious look upon my face as I studied the equipment and pondered about what would come from this experienceAm I prepared for this?[I was] Feeling nervous and intimidated. Adding internal dialogue in these areas were a bit of a challenge for

Long !5 me because it was so out of my norm, but as part of the assignment, I needed to add more. I worry if it sounds right and flows well. But its all about taking risks and independent inquiry, right? Midterm The midterm was something different for me because it required a lot of reflection based on inner thoughts. It was slightly challenging because each question had a minimum 200 word response. Although, I understand this requirement was to motivate the student to think and write more about how they are feeling/performing in the course. Writing this midterm got me more involved in the course because I had to think about the key concepts and how they were being applied to my writing development. I mentioned in question 4, I feel like I am really progressing when it comes to independent inquiry. I came into college wanting to change my negative perception of writing to a positive outlook. I explain in my midterm how I am progressing in independent inquiry through risk-taking, which I mentioned I was struggling with some. I took risks as described before in the Literacy Narrative but all were an attempt to be a better writer even if I was stepping out of my comfort zone. Genre Study The genre study for this course I believe to be the most beneficial to me in this course in terms of the writing process and revision. Unlike the blogging assignment, the genre study did not come easy to me. When I wrote my first draft of the genre study, I was confused. I did not know much about what I was doing in terms of rhetorical analysis. How could I make my paper flow right? Does my vernacular even make sense? I did not take AP English courses in high school so I did not have much practice in analyzing literature. I stressed big time over this

Long !6 assignment and to be honest, I procrastinated on the assignment out of fear. Fear of not being capable of providing and accurate and good analysis. The reading What is Genre and How Can It Help You? is a great piece of writing to have students read in this course because it gives explains to a college student what writing genres are to those who are unsure, like I was. After reading, I began to take risks and write what I thought was a good analysis of the paper following the small handout given to us in class that had questions as to what we should be looking for. For the high school part of my genre study, I analyzed my own senior-exit research paper. I was thinking it would be a little easier to analyze something that I had previously written because I knew what the wording meant and the overall purpose of the document. I spent time highlighting lines of my senior exit paper and writing the number question it related to from the genre study handout and wrote my responses from there. I turned in my draft of this writing thinking I did an OK job, but it turns out my analysis was broad. I had comments on my paper stating you can narrow this genre down to HS research essays or just to senior-exit essays?. From this feedback, I knew I had to do a little more research as maybe I still wasnt understanding exactly what a good genre analysis should look like. In my revision process, I visited a few other students genre analysis and made note of differences noticing that these students provided consistent references to their piece which helped them stay focused on that specific piece rather than the broad genre topic. In my second draft, you will see I have completely re-written the entire high school genre analysis from my new prospective. This newer draft has more quoting, references, and explanations. I then took time to write my own feedback on this draft using track changes and comments in word to show places where I think I may need improvement. This assignment taught me a lot when it comes to the writing process

Long !7 and revision. I understand that a writer doesnt always completely understand all types of writing there are, but they have the common sense to go out and research about what it is and come up with their own style through adaptation of another writers practices. Blogging Educational blogging in this course was interesting for me. Never in my academic career had I had a chance to open up. These six posts range from the beginning of the course to the final weeks of the Fall 2013 semester. As you read through my blogs, you will see examples of my thought process, feelings, and overall involvement in this english course. In my first blog post, I said Writing. I often cringe when I hear the word. Writing and reading have always been my least favorite subjects as they are my weakest link. I feel my writing often does not compare to the quality of writing my peers possess but I hope that this college level course will increase my writing skills and ease my mind. This course has allowed me to develop an open mind of writing. I now no longer view it is a hassle to write. As I stated in my last blog post, I am moving onto ENGL 1102 feeling more confident in my writing practices and eager to learn more. I have opened my mind up to critical thinking, brainstorming, as well as the overall writing process to become a successful writer in my introductory courses. Writers Notebook Artifacts On my portfolio essay page, you will see my two writers notebook artifacts. The first artifact is my analysis of the course description that we created at the beginning of the class. I chose to include this piece because it demonstrates my thoughts and expectations of what I thought this class was going to be about. This artifact includes thoughts such as In this class, we will be learning how to become a better writer, how to express and present our writingas

Long !8 well as critique and edit the writing of ourselves and our peers. This pretty much sums the course up to me and all that I have been through. I have in my opinion became a much more thorough and thoughtful writer. I have practiced taking risks and thinking to myself how would I improve my writing through independent inquiry. My second artifact is my Reader Response Letter to the reading Shitty First Drafts. I included this writing because I believe it was a segway into my risk taking and development of my writing process. Since I was uneasy at the beginning of the course, I didnt want to start on any of the assignments that were quickly approaching. But after reading Shitty First Drafts, I felt more confident. I stated in my RRL Lamott makes a point that the first draft of a piece of writing that you are assigned to do is ok to be, as the text calls it, shitty. I said this line because I thought my writing was not to par of what it should be. After reading Lamotts writing, this has made be rethink about the writing process. Its ok in the beginning to have a somewhat jumbled up paper with missing descriptions and inadequate length since this is all part of the writing process. All authors of great books had to start somewhere, and they all began with Shitty First Drafts. Grading In terms of grading for this course, I believe I deserve a low A. This course has been an roller coaster for me. I started out the class feeling OK, believing I was going to be able to get through without much effort. Though the literacy narrative, I was still feeling this way but when the genre study came around, I knew I needed to work on improving as a writer and this is where I feel I began to take action. The genre study taught me that there is a process of writing. No one, not even famous writers can write a perfect paper on the first try. Even the most successful

Long !9 writers struggle, but its all about critical thinking, independent inquiry, the writing process and revision, and taking risks. I have learned this concepts from my processes of writing the genre analysis. Coming from not knowing what a rhetorical analysis is to taking risks and writing to the best of my ability. Then taking that best writing and making it even better. I have written my assignment to the best of my abilities by integrating the key concepts of the course and focusing on my growth as a writer. I will continue to take this knowledge and apply it towards my future classes, and my career.