Dear Portfolio Reader,

Thank you for taking your time to read my Writing 102 Portfolio. My name is Frederick
Koo, and I am currently a junior at Stony Brook University. The major that I am currently in is
mechanical engineering. Even though English was one of the first languages that I learned,
writing was never really one of my strong subjects. Thats why whenever I was prompted to
write an essay for previous courses, I would struggle and submit mediocre work. While taking
Writing 102, I was able to cultivate my writing abilities, and improve overall as a writer.
The first essay that I have written for my portfolio is a textual analysis essay. In the
textual analysis essay, I analyze the authors ability to convey an emotion and used excerpts from
the text to support my claim. The text that I chose to analyze was In the Ravine by Anton
Chekhov. I chose this text because during class time we were required to read various short
stories by a variety of authors. When I was reading In the Ravine the story enticed me so I
decided that In the Ravine would be the text that I would analyze. While writing my textual
analysis essay I had a fair amount of trouble. Even though I had been required to analyze text in
previous classes, I was never really good at it and would constantly struggle. Through writing a
textual analysis essay I was able improve my analysis skills. I was able to improve my analysis
skills by forcing myself to look deeper at the texts hidden meaning, rather than reading the text
and moving on.
The second essay that I wrote for my portfolio is an argumentative research essay. For my
argumentative research essay I argue how the writer is able to make the reader feel about a
character. The story that I chose for this essay was The fkoDead by James Joyce. This essay
was the most difficult one for me to write. The reason I had the most trouble writing this piece
was because all the skills needed to write this essay were new. When writing this essay, I had to
use secondary sources to support that claims that I made. The issue with this was in my high
school years I didnt really have to insure that my sources were valid when doing research, so
when I had to use valid sources for this piece, it was difficult for me to find useful information.
Also in high school I never had to write in MLA format, so it was a new experience learning how
to write in MLA format and implement it properly.
The third essay that I wrote was a Narrative. This essay was by far the easiest for me to
write. I had such an easy time writing this essay because I based it off an experience that I
encountered during my studies. Since it was based off something that I had previously felt, it was
easy for me to convey those emotions that I experienced. When writing this essay, I had to learn
how to step in the shoes of the reader and how to properly convey my message.
I have learned many skill while taking this writing course. I learned these skills by
reading the works of many successful writers, as well as writing essays to apply the skills I
learned, and improve on them. Through taking this writing course I have learned how to analyze
text, I have learned how to write in a professional format, and do proper research. From this class
I also learned how to properly express my opinion in a professional manner. The skill that I have
learned from this class will be very useful for me in the future. In the future when I become an
engineer I will have to be able to write professionally and write technical report and taking the
course is the first step in achieving that.