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Joseph Glenn Professor Suzanne Ingram English 1101 28 July 2013 The E-Portfolio that shows progress I've honestly learned many things in this class. I have certainly learned more in this class than I have learned in all four of my English classes in high school. For this E-Portfolio assignment, I'm just rereading my essays and seeing what needs to be changed, and taking out any repeating phrases. So far I've found many things in my High School Literary essay that I can revise and some things in my Midterm that I can change. Most of the errors are either grammatical, or the way I stated my idea. The High School Literary Essay really stopped me from hating English and it helped me to understand my strong and weak points. The reason it stopped me from hating English is because it helped me to elaborate and say what I wanted to say about the book 1984 instead of just talk about important points. The assignment let me write what I thought and, I wasn't penalized for it and my paper didn't look like a battle plan. There also wasn't a type of style that I had to use in order for the paper to seem perfect in any and every way. Usually constructive criticism discouraged me because I took it personally, but now I take it as a way to better myself and a way to make people understand what I'm trying to tell them on the paper. I improved some of my points from my first draft by taking some things about the book out of the paper , and putting things about me and how I felt on the book inside of the paper. Instead of explaining half of the book I gave examples of how the real world relates to it. An example of this is when I talked about Big Brother always having your eyes on you I related it to an example in real life, not in the book. "The posters about Big Brothers watching you I thought were definitely true,

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the first example I thought of was Google maps, so I used my laptop to find my own location and Im not lying when I tell you that I could see myself sitting in my room. " this quote from my high school analysis paper shows how I compared the book to real life. The Reader Response helped me to analyze the text better than the literary analysis that we had to do in high school. It helped me to focus on what the reader was trying to tell us, no matter how open or how hidden the meaning was. My favorite reading response was Dont tell me what to write" because I still wasn't too thrilled about writing papers, and also because I didn't like high school English. It helped us to look out for what the writer meant, what he was truly trying to convey, and helped us to give our personal opinion on what it meant to us. Sometimes we arent passionate about it and end up not doing the best that I can. I also agree that people do better when they write from the heart, which is called expressive writing (Britton 67) In that part of the writing I agreed with the author and even stated my own opinion; I also had examples from the book to prove my point. It also helped me to find errors with people's papers including open ended questions, choppy flow, and parts of the story that just seem to jump around. The Blog posts helped me to find myself and reevaluate past experiences in not only my high school life, but life in general that I wouldn't have thought too much about normally. It taught me to not to overthink things, but to pay attention to details that may help you in the future. I've written a blog before this class, but I think that I got better at expressing myself in a formal way and also getting my point across. The blog helped me to understand how I actually write and how to use my style of writing to maximize how I communicate with people. I say that because before I just talked about what they wanted me to talk about and I gave them the opinions that they wanted to hear." I'm honestly a bit nervous about writing because I honestly

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don't know what others will think, I personally wonder, do I write truthfully about life? Or do I just write what people want to hear. I honestly wonder if I am good at writing. This is an example of how I was before, I was nervous because I believed that instructors in general hated people having their own opinion, and I was also stuck inside my shell. Now because of the blog posts I am now able to type my own opinions and even come out of my shell. The reason I've felt angry about writing is because it wasn't what I wanted to write about, and since they mostly graded grammatical errors my grades in the class dropped. I was very discouraged because I felt there was no reason to write if I just get a "C"." This blog post was my most recent blog, you can see that here I write my own opinion and how I felt about the subject. The Genre Study Assignment helped me to learn about the many different genres that there are. Originally I thought genres were only for books, movies, and music. The genre study helped me to realize that there are genres like education tests and blogs. The assignment focused on who can be the author and who is the audience. I also learned that some of the genres, even when the target audience is right may not be useful to everyone in the audience. This statement from my college genre study assignment proves this. Dr. Smiths global connections test was tough, the reason was not only because I dont know how to study well for tests, but also because I was very nervous when I took it and my mind went blank. The target audience was indeed me because I was a student; however it didnt work well with me because of test anxiety. Examples like this tell me that genres can usually work for the general public, but there are sometimes special cases where you need to do something different in order for the student to excel. The way Im going to set up my e-portfolio is that I will put the Portfolio Essay at the start of it, and after that I will put in my Midterm. The reason that I will put my Midterm essay behind this is because it will explain how I was before this class. It will explain how I thought,

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talked and how I saw most of my life so that the person going through the portfolio will get an understanding of me. The portfolio would be rather boring if you didnt have understanding for who was writing. After the Midterm would be the High School Assignment, the reason behind this would be because it would show you my writing ability and it would also seem like a chapter in my life that you may not have seen. The writing aspect of it shows my writing and how I think while Im reading or how I piece things together in my mind. Next would be my blogs, most people know that the first time that I was here, I was very shy. The blogs will show you the progress of how I slowly came out of my shell and started to express my opinion. This part is very important because it not only shows my progress as a writer when I gain my confidence, but it also shows what really goes on inside a quiet persons mind. It also shows how people write when they write from the heart instead of just doing an assignment in order just to get it over with. The next assignment that I will put together is the Genre Study Assignment. To be honest this were one the assignments that I didnt do too well on because I did multiple genres which only made more work for me to do. It is one of the works that needs the most revising which is the reason that as of now, it will be one of the last literary works in the e-portfolio. What Im going to do after that is compare the first draft to the final draft on each of my works, in order to show how far Ive come and how I revised it. When I originally came to this program, I thought that I was going to just do my work and get it over with considering that I knew that I didnt fit in no matter how hard I tried. I thought that you were going to just give us a book, make us read it, analyze it and write about it without our personal opinions or ideas. I also thought that the atmosphere would be ten times more hostile, and that anything that we say could, and probably would make you judge against us. However when I was in the classroom it was more relaxed and I felt as if I could actually

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express myself. This was very rare because usually I didnt talk, or write my own opinion in any classroom I was basically a computer being told what to do, but here when I received first assignment I opened up a lot more because I liked the book so much before. When I received true criticism for the first time I didnt feel bad, in fact I took full advantage of it because I wanted to improve as a writer. When I started to revise it, the critics told me that you wanted to basically see the event through my eyes, you wanted to know what I was thinking, and saying throughout the event. When I heard this, I started to write from the heart and showing how I truly felt on the matter, I also remembered certain events that I would have never thought about if I wasnt writing. From that assignment on I usually just wrote how I felt on the subject and some examples of how I felt by the memories that I had. Most of the time, I understood what you were talking about, and others I had to ask other people but overall I did like writing in the class. I also really liked the blog, because not everyone could see them. I feel like Im just ranting and talking directly to the teacher when Im on the blogs, and no one is judging me for my opinion or being rude to me. I have improved mostly on speaking my mind and being open to other peoples opinions, I have also opened up as a writer and as a person. Im not afraid to stand up my beliefs and opinions, and I will defend them to the best of my knowledge which is the reason that I believe that I deserve and A+ in English 1101.