Olivia Cotter

Professor Ingram
September 30,2014

Midterm-Fall 2014

Questions:

Look back at your first blog post from this class. What questions did you pose in
August that you can now answer? Are there any that you cant answer?

The first blog was proposed to for questions about the syllabus and the class as a whole.
In my blog post one of the questions I asked how does peer editing work? Throughout the
semester we have been placed in peer editing groups and it is now very clear to me how
this process works. This courses uses peer editing as a way to influence ones writing and
help the writer grow. Receiving feedback is beneficial to broaden the scope through your
writing style by being subjected to different peoples styles. By taking advice from
different people you are able to pick out certain qualities that you like to influence your
writing in a better way. Writing is an ever-changing process and everyone always needs a
different approach to push them and challenge them to be a better writer. The other
question was about the grading process of this class. Through the class we have been
assigned one Literacy Narrative and a few Reader Response letters followed by blog
posts. These assignments can be tricky because of the different dialect and styles of
writing you oversee. However, Professor Ingram always supplies the class with a
discussion and further explanation of the topic the following class. This is helpful
because you can always go back and add a thought to your blog post to expand it and
make sure it is as in depth as you want it to be.


B. Look at the 9 key concepts on the first page of the course syllabus. These concepts
are practices or "habits of mind" that you should engage with during this course.
Which ones do you feel you're doing the best with and how? Which ones seem the
most challenging and why? What questions do you have about them?

In the list of key concepts one the first page of the syllabus for this course I find the
concept that sticks out to me the most is being responsible for your own learning. I have
found in college that even though professors relay certain information to you to truly be
aware if you know the information being taught you have to challenge yourself. In this
course some of the reading material assigned to analyze is not a piece of cake, it
sometimes takes me till the next class to fully understand it through our discussion.
Therefore I always challenge myself to later go back in my reader response letter and
look at what I could have added to make my opinion stand out, or comment on my blog
post to expand my thoughts. Performing these extra little tasks will not benefit my grade
in any way but it helps me be satisfied with my own work and know that I am benefitting
from this class. I feel like getting out of my comfort zone is something I definitely need
to work on in this class. In high school my writing was always the same and now being
subjected to diverse styles it is hard for me to venture from something I am so use to. For
example in my peer editing group they told me I should combine both of my drafts,
although, I liked this idea I had never seen a such a descriptive piece thrown into and
information one. Therefore, feelings of displeasure came as I was working on draft three.
Overall I see this course impacting me intellectually and maturely. I already refer back to
the topics we have accomplished so far in other classes through my writing as well as my
speech.

C. In your Final Portfolio Essay (FPE), youll be asked to analyze the work youve
done in the course. Youll want to quote from your own writing to support your
analyses. Lets practice by looking at your Literacy Narrative: what are your
favorite revisions that you made to that essay (any draft) and why? QUOTE from
your Literacy Narrative to illustrate what youre discussing. You may quote from
various drafts to show the changes you made.

The first draft of my literacy narrative was more information than personal. Therefore, I
thought the second draft assignment met the needs of finding a sense of personality in my
topic. My narrative was on dancing and how I became literate in the language of dance.
This topic is something I love and am very passionate about but I did not know how to
put such strong feelings on paper especially to an audience who may be unfamiliar with
this topic. In my first draft I stated some of the terms of dance by saying, I can
remember growing up learning the terms such as tombe and grand jete.. I removed
these terms because when I was reading it aloud I felt as if was very cheesy. Although it
represented the discourse community I am a part of the audience was unable to see the
meaning of these words without visualizing it. It was hard for me to capture visualization
also when speaking the dance language words or movement always follows phrases,
which is something you cannot show on paper. I tried to capture this in my first draft as
well by saying, Phrases will be given to you leaving you to react with the correct
movement. Tomb ,Pas de bourre ,Glissade, Pirouette. For people who are illiterate to
the language of dance they may not even know this is a common phrase for a dancer to
perform. For a dancer we see exactly what needs to be done on the floor. Even explaining
to someone who is illiterate in dance is hard to be done in words. The best possible
explanation would be stand on the top of the ball of your foot then glide then alter your
feet in a back side front motion small leap gently off the ground then finish with a term.
When editing my paper I saw this section as a very muddy area because it was very hard
for me to describe it without physically performing the movement. As stated in the
previous question I was displeased with my third draft because I was unaware whether or
not a descriptive essay such as my second draft truly fits into my first draft. After I get
feedback from Professor Ingram I may take this piece to the University Writing Center to
see if they have any suggestions on how I can feel better about my own work.

D. Choose one of the 8 sample e-Portfolios from our Moodle2 page to
rhetorically analyze. You have notes from class and Moodle2 to pull from. In
your analysis, remember to address the following: --The rhetorical triad: How
do all the pieces (author, reader, purpose, context/situation) "work" in this
sample e-Portfolio? --The modes of communication the author uses.
Remember, no text communicates via one single mode. --What is the genre of
this e-Portfolio? Is the genre simply "e-Portfolio," or does it fit into a more
specific sub-genre? Based on the way you categorize this, can you figure out
some rules for writing in this genre? What are those rules/conventions? --The
ultimate goal of rhetorical analysis is to explore the success of the text at hand.
So, based on your analysis, do you think this sample e-Portfolio is successful?
Why or why not?
I analyzed sample number four of the of the e-portfolios displayed on Professor
Ingrams moodle page. The author of this e-portfolio was Lauren Gruber and her
audience was to people of the Internet community. Laurens purpose of creating this
website was to showcase her work also as a learning and reflection tool. A e-
portfolio is a collection of evidence to show you improvement over time. Also,
Lauren is striving for perfection in her class and she wants to impress her professor
and earn a good grade. Lauren shows her growth by creating her website
linguistically and visually to help provide the information of her class as well
showed her personality as well. She uses pictures to show her personality and also
uses tabs to organize her work. By analyzing the icons on her page you can tell she is
interested in music and arts. The genre of Laurens work would be considered a
bibliographic genre. The narratives displayed in this website and the symbols and
pictures all draw sense to the audience of who she is as a person. This genre exists
when anyone wants someone to know anything about him or her. The rules of this
genre is to share information you are literate in and how that literacy influenced
your life and helped you become the person you are. This e-portfolio fits all
expectations of the genre and limitations that peer editing allows. It shows Laurens
improvements and personality. She targets her audience and displays her work in
an organized way to impress her peers and professor.



As of midterm, what grade have you earned in this course? Look back over your
answers on this midterm as well as page 3 of the syllabus (the e-Portfolio Grade
Scale). Are you setting yourself up to compose an exemplary e-Portfolio? After
youve explained your grade, you may also ask questions about the Grade Scale if
any you have any.

So far in this course I feel as if I am doing very well. I am very serious about my work
and wanting to improve my writing as a whole. As far as my e-portfolio I am still
figuring out Weebly. Perfection is something that I strive for in everything, however,
with Weebly it takes some playing around in order to have your work displayed properly.
As of now I feel like I have earned an A in this class. I have completed all my
assignments and continued to play with my e-portfolio tweaking it little by little to make
it better and better. I also have added to my blog post under the comment sections to
ensure full understanding of the topics we were studying at the time. We have not gotten
to the point where we have been publishing our literacy narratives on our portfolio.
Therefore, not a lot of work is displayed yet. When polished works are finished they
should be displayed in our e-portfolio. Therefore, our literacy narrative should be put up
soon just not until final edits come from Professor Ingram. Are we just graded on the
assignments we were told to display? Does our e-portfolio have to be at all time complete
or is it graded as a work in progress?