Privette 1 Zachary Privette Ingram ENGL-1101 Portfolio Essay 10/30/13 Portfolio Essay At the beginning of the semester Mrs.

. Ingram exclaimed that the class of ENGL-1101 was more about writing than reading and interpreting stories. From what she said here I could feel a nervous breakdown coming throughout the whole rest of my semester, because writing was my biggest weakness when it comes to studying English. The course was also about making inquiries about readings. Even then, I didnt know what the heck an inquiry was. Soon I discovered it was as simple as asking questions, and that many of these questions I will be asking about writing, my own and my peers, about how to improve and revise, and how to give feedback to help your peers improve their writing. Each one of the assignments we did throughout the semester without a doubt helped significantly to my writing. Whereas I thought I was going to have a heart attack, I actually gained a little confidence with my writing. Literacy Narrative The Literacy Narrative was probably my favorite assignment that I did as I was given a choice of what I wanted to write about that was related to a build in my literacy. Although what we had to write about didnt exactly have to be about writing a paper or something similar to it, I chose to do it anyway as I felt it would be easier to relate to in my build in literacy. I felt this was very significant to my progress in writing as it allowed me to express details and quotes in ways that it would entertain the reader and keep them hooked to the story, like for example I was still kind of half-asleep under my hoody when she announced it, but I could hear my friends making

Privette 2 unwarranted statements such as Oh, hell no, Great, and Man, f*** that. During this time I couldnt help but laugh on the inside about what they were saying, but I was still uneasy to the fact we had a report to do. In my Literacy Narrative I decided to write about a time in high school where I had to write a report on a famous author, which was Herman Melville in my narrative. In many parts I tried to show immense detail to the situation in the story. Such a part can be found in the second paragraph as an example. This assignment also took the key concept of risk-taking. Even though I found the narrative easy to write as it was my choice, it was difficult for me to write about a past experience that was difficult for me to remember exactly. Genre Analysis The genre study was by far the most excruciating assignment that I did. Throughout the assignment I struggled to understand and grasp the concept of genre and what exactly it was. Furthermore I had to pick certain genres for high school and college that I had to analyze. Although simply analyzing it with the help of the Analysis Guide was easy, it was figuring out how to organize and display it with writing that was challenging to me. As far as what genres I chose, I did sports schedules for my high school genre and Reader Response Letter for my college genre. For each genre I used an Analysis Guide to help identify the different elements of the genre, and later compare and contrast these elements between the high school and college genre. But after the assignment, I felt like I could understand genres better and can better identify them. This was mostly due to having the Analysis Guide to use, which asked things like Who is the author of the text? and Who is the intended audience of the text? Also utilizing this I was able to easily make comparisons between the two genres to help better understand them uniquely.

Privette 3 Midterm This was my only class where I had to do something for midterm, which may come to a bit of a surprise to some. At first I thought the assignment was going to be a pain, but it turned out to be simply answering questions with a certain amount of words to each answer that was basically your opinion or quoting something from the recent assignments then. I felt this helped me reassure that my writing was growing and getting better, and that I would be prepared to take on future assignments with this improvement. Many of the questions to be answered referred to the things on the syllabus, such as: Look at the syllabus, at the "Central Questions" of this course. Now that you've been a college student for a while, how do you answer the 2nd question?

The assignment also cleared up a bunch of questions that I had at the beginning of the semester. Such a question from the syllabus was What are the differences between high school competency and college success? to which I answered I would say the biggest difference is that you have to be a lot more focused on your academic work in college compared to high school. Without a doubt the whole assignment referred and was ideal to the concept of intellectual growth and maturity. Artifacts My artifacts section consists of examples of my work that I did throughout the semester, which is 5 Process Work Artifacts, 2 Notebook Artifacts and 2 Feedback Artifacts. My 5 Process Work Artifacts consists of my 1st draft of my Literacy Narrative, the 1st drafts of the 3 parts of the Genre Study, and the 1st draft of my Portfolio Essay. I chose these to simply show my process of improvement as a writer through the drafts I did for the assignments. For my 2 Notebook Artifacts, I have my 2nd RRL and a page in my notebook that has the lists of Dos and

Privette 4 Donts. I chose these just because I thought they were important to my learning to the class. My feedback artifacts consist of the 2nd page of my Genre Study and the 1st page of my Literacy narrative. I chose my Genre Study feedback because considering how difficult it was to do the assignment it was invaluable to revising my writing. I chose my Literacy Narrative feedback simply because it was the very first feedback that I received for an assignment, and it gave me an understanding of how feedback works to your writing. Blogging Our first blog post was the first assignment we did. I have heard of blogs on the Internet, but I was oblivious to what their purpose was, what they looked like, and what exactly they were about. I had to even look at examples of blogs before I could even do one myself. But I realized that blogs were just like articles with an authors opinion or information on anything they wanted to talk about. The blog posts that I did were essential to my growth with writing as I was writing with a genre I was unfamiliar with, and also that I could be a little creative with some things that I wrote in blog posts. For example, in my fourth blog post, which was like a free-write, I decided to write about strange deaths in North Carolina. This was by far the easiest and best blog post I did, as I was actually able to write about something that I intended and wanted to write that was interesting to me. An example from my blog post shown below shows the delightful tone I take with my writing that would, to others, take serious.
Sooo... you are probably wondering how the heck a pair of forceps had been left inside her stomach and caused her stomach to literally cut open. Remember that gastric bypass surgery she had? Well, apparently the plastic surgeon had accidently left his forceps inside the wife's stomach during the procedure. The coughing I guess caused enough force for the forceps to begin cutting through her stomach. As soon as the stomach is punctured it is technically instant death, because the stomach acid being leaked will literally "eat your body" as the stomach has a special lining that protects you from this acid.

Privette 5 Also, I discovered several of the key concepts in my blog posts. In my first blog post about the syllabus, I had made a bunch of independent inquiry within my post, asking a bunch of questions that seemed to be aimed at myself like what exactly are we "risking" as far as writing goes?. I also saw providing and receiving feedback in my posts, as in the comments people gave their opinion in response to what I blogged about. But I didnt really provide feedback as I didnt even know how to add to comment to someones post (something I wish I knew how to do). And lastly, I saw intellectual growth and maturity in my midterm post, as I was able to review my progress of my growth as a writer and I could seek to improve it through the semester. Grade In complete honestly, I think a fair B or at least high C would suit the effort I try to put into my work. When considering the grading scale, my efforts seem to fall in the category of achieving a B. My overall portfolio seems complete and without a doubt I put as much effort as I could afford into it. I also seem to have used and understood the use of the key concepts throughout the course and did my best in quoting and giving examples of my work show my growth as a writer.