Mota 1

Hevany Mota

Eng. 121

Mrs. Litle

2 May 2019

Portfolio Reflection

In this paper I will be writing a reflection on my work this semester, addressing these 5

topics: Exhibit an understanding of audience, purpose, genre, context, and formatting that is

responsive to the situation; Plan, write, review and review multi-paragraph compositions that

stress analytical, evaluative, exploratory, and persuasive/argumentative writing within various

rhetorical situations; and apply composition conventions, including organization, presentation

and stylistic choice. The style and organization of writing is related to the MLA format. This

type of style helped me organize my writing and create the best presentation possible, by

employing critical and evaluative reading skills in order to synthesize evidence and/or sources in

support of a claim using an appropriate documentation system (MLA), and apply genre

conventions including structure, paragraphing, tone, mechanics, grammar, syntax, and style. I

will explain how I improved over the course of the semester, what helped me to improve, the

good and bad experiences of the course, and also I will explain some of the importance that this

course had in my integration here in the USA as an exchange student.

The first major learning outcome for the course was: “Exhibit an understanding of

audience, purpose, genre, context, and formatting that is responsive to the situation.” Writing

organization and the way we present our written works is important in any class. These abilities

that I learned were the fruits of my study of the MLA format. The work we did at the beginning
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of the year with the rules of MLA format was very useful in improving my techniques in this

style of writing. Throughout the academic year, there were several courses that asked for the

papers written in this type of format, which was no longer a problem for me, because I had

already learned MLA in English composition classes.

The second learning outcome was: “Plan, write, revise and review multi-paragraph

compositions that stress analytical, evaluative, exploratory, and persuasive/argumentative writing

within various rhetorical situations.” During the semester, writing and understanding the English

language was one of the aspects in which I improved the most. The journals which we wrote

were the tools that helped me the best in these two aspects. At the beginning of the semester I

used Google Translate from Portuguese to English to write my papers, but over time I started to

write in English and I felt a considerable improvement. From then I started to write the journals

in English, but the term papers were still very extensive and I still used Google to translate most

of the works. I hope that for the coming year I can write the most extensive works in English too.

As for the research and planning aspects (not as much as the writing) I also had good progress

thanks to the help of the members of the Learning Commons. Regarding the persuasive and

argumentative aspects of the course, I learned during the classes that those who argue more

effectively are those who have the "truth," and that those who persuade effectively are using the

right arguments and logic.

The third learning outcome was “Apply composition conventions, including organization,

presentation and stylistic choice “. The style and organization of writing is in the MLA format.

This type of style helped me organize my writing and make it professionally presentable. The

organization of work is one of the first steps towards a good presentation of the work in the

classroom, and MLA is the best way to learn style, have good organization, to give credit to
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authors, and to present the latest and most credible information possible. The MLA “Works

Cited” is also important for knowing where to go to get the source of the information. I learned

how important it is to prove the credibility of the information that we want to present.

The fourth learning outcome was “Employ critical and evaluative reading skills in order

to synthesize evidence and/or sources in support of a claim, using an appropriate documentation

system”. Paper 3 was the best example of how to learn and improve a synthesis, such as

summarizing other papers for Paper 3. I improved my ability to synthesize, analyze and

understand the message in the article and then summarize in my own words.

The fifth learning outcome was “Apply genre conventions including structure,

paragraphing, tone, mechanics, grammar, syntax, and style”. Grammar and syntax are aspects of

the English language that I have learned in all the work both in homework journals and in the

classroom. Because the writing and the comprehension of the English that occurred at the

beginning of the semester was very difficult for me, grammar was also one of my weaknesses.

During this semester I had a great improvement in that aspect. Every assignment done in and out

of the room helped in my improvement.