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Nakia Cornelius Susan Ingram English 1103-36 27 November 2012 Portfolio Essay My English 1103 is not like the English classes in high school. In English the process we went through for each assignment was write, peer edit, and revise. In my portfolio I placed my writing strategically so the reader can see and how the assignments connected to each other, track my growth, and see how I progressed and became more confident as a writer. Our semester thematic question is What does it mean to be healthy? The first assignment you will see in my portfolio is my cover letter to the Whats It Like to be You essay. I discuss how the essay was hard to do without using technology. When I write papers I usually listen to music or watch TV. I was also surprised at how deep I got in my essay and how easy it was to just write about myself. First you will see my cover letter for the WILTBY essay. In this cover letter I discuss how challenging it was to write my first draft without the use of technology, how I opened up and I was surprised with how deep I got in my essay. I was unsure if I was writing it correctly. Next, is my first draft of the WILTBY essay. This essay was hard because you never think about what it is like to be yourself. I talked about things that I normally wouldnt tell people about my life. In the first draft I wrote like I was writing in a journal. I then realized that this essay wasnt meant to be as informal as I wrote it. So in my Final draft I wrote like I was leaning more towards writing an autobiography. This

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was one of the first papers that I wrote in this class and I wasnt feeling confident as writer. I also didnt have much experience with peer editing so I did not feel like I could peer edit someone elses paper. I was very nervous about sharing my paper with my group. After the peer editing workshop was completed, I felt better towards writing my second draft. So, next you will see the response I received from class members when they peer edited my second draft this helped me complete my final draft. I got responses like Whats it like to be you today? Whats it like to be inside your head? How can you connect your past to your present? All these questions got me thinking and helped me elaborate on what it is like to be me. I revised my essay by adding a poem and pictures. I gave more details about experiences that I wrote about in my paper. In my first draft I wrote about what it was like to be me in growing up into high school. In my second draft I continued to tell the story about my life and what it is like to be me today. This was one of my assignments that needed the most improvement so next you will see the final copy of my Whats It Like to Be You essay. Next, you will see the final copy of my annotated bibliography we started working more towards our essential question What does it mean to be healthy? The topic I chose to write about was stress in college students because I felt this topic would be easy to relate to. I wanted to see what people were saying about my topic. In my first draft I didnt include a lot of sources or good evaluations. In my second draft I added more sources and included a thorough evaluation of the sources like weather or not I thought each source was creditable and why. The annotated bibliography helped me better define my inquiry question and gain more knowledge about my topic. I was able

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to learn about different stress research groups, find sources and people that are interested in my topic. I also included interviews of current college students and how stress affects them. You will then see the cover letter of the 2nd draft of my 3 sided assignment. . My first draft was a disaster! I talked about 3 of my sources and their perspectives. For example, in my first draft one of my examples was what Whole Living Magazine thought about stress. Next, I included the final copy of my 3 sided- assignment. In my final draft, it was more about what the group S.T.A.R thought about stress. I had to make complete changes to my final draft I discussed 3 groups instead of sources and their perspectives of stress, added parenthetical citations, and worked on adding topic sentences and transitions. Next, in my portfolio I will include my notes about how to develop a working thesis from the reading From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Practical Guide. These notes helped me construct a thesis that way I could be prepared for my argumentative research essay. I will also include my brainstorming process of writing a thesis. One day in class Ms. Ingram told us all to draw a fish. We were all thinking what is the point of us all drawing a fish? Then I realized that she told the class to draw the same thing but everyones fish looked different. Just like the concept of our research papers. We all have the same guidelines but each paper will come out different. So, I have included the picture of my fish because this was one of my favorite journal topics in class. I have also included the notes from class when we studied ethos, logos, and pathos. I have never heard of these before so when I first heard these terms they

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sounded like the names of three Greek Gods! These notes were interesting and important in the process of writing our research paper. I learned that emotion, credibility, and diction were very important and it was needed to write a respectable research paper. I have included the feedback I received from Ms. Ingram for the first draft of my argumentative research paper. My first draft needed better organization, my purpose needed to be clearer, and I needed to work on my wording. After we created inquiry questions, conducted research, summarized and evaluated our sources, blogged about our findings as we research, explored how three different groups viewed our topic we were ready to write our argumentative essay. Finally, you will see my final draft of the Argumentative Research essay. I decided to place this last because this is what we have been working up to the whole entire semester. It shows my growth as a writer and my argumentative skills. As of right now I can say that I am a more confident writer. You can notice more of myself and my ideas blossoming out of each paper. In the beginning of the semester starting with the Whats It Like to Be You essay I was terrified at the fact that my peers would have to read my writing. I was also nervous about giving my peers advice. Today I actually enjoy going into class with my first draft and letting my group tell me what I can improve on, I ask questions, and I am not afraid to tell my peers what they can improve on. I was prepared for class, engaged in most class discussions, attended conferences, and missed one day of class. I believe that I deserve at least a B in this class.

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