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Ben Coon Professor Ingram ENGL 1101 10/30/13 Portfolio Essay Within this portfolio there are a wide variety of writing examples from this semester. From essays multiple pages in length to a blog post that only has 500 words to it, this portfolio has everything from this semester. It is organized into six different pages. The page you are currently on hosts the Portfolio Essay. There is one page for each of the major papers that were assigned this semester, the Literacy Narrative, the Midterm, and the Genre Study. Along with these pages there is one page for blog posts and one page for all of the writing artifacts that were included in the portfolio. I decided to organize the website in this fashion because it grouped the writings with the most similarities. This set up also gives the reader quick access to the four major assignments along with the blog. This organization also puts all of the artifacts on one page so the reader does not have to switch from page to page in order to understand how one of my essays is produced. This semester I have learned a lot about myself and the way I learn. From this course and the other courses I am currently taking I have found that I am much better at learning in the college environment as compared to the high school learning style. I am much more independent and self-taught. In high school I spent many hours in school learning things I already understood and this always seemed like a waist to me. I always saw this time as being a lost opportunity to learn something new to me instead of repeating something already known. Now in college the predominate amount of time spent learning is outside of the classroom. In college I am able to

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spend as much time as I need on a topic and then continue on to something new. This has allowed me to spend a great deal of time learning things that I do not know already and practicing skills that I want to be better at. If this were high school I would not have any time for this because I would still be going over the same thing I learnt two day before. This fact that I can teach myself has given me much more control over my education and has also taught me responsibility for it. After getting used to being able to learn at my own pace I began to get too comfortable with it. I began to forget my assignments and had to do things the night before they were due, something I had avoided the whole first half of the semester. This made me realize that I needed to be more attentive to the assignments I was given instead of just cruising through classes. I had to be able to get things done in a timely manner. This was a wakeup call that I needed to show me that I needed to take more care of my assignments. I had been used to teacher reminding me when things are due from high school. I am still getting used to having to check for assignments myself to find when they are due but I am improving. In becoming more responsible for my own learning I have found new ways of improving myself and more specifically my writing. Over the past few years my English teachers frequently told me to write drafts and revise them, but none of them ever told me what to revise. These teachers would review the grammar and punctuation and add the odd very good comment. In my eyes if the grammar was the only aspect the teacher worried about then it should be the one I worry about. This instilled in me a mindset of focusing only on the words and not on what they were saying. Doing this caused me to improve greatly on my grammar, but it did not do much to change the core of my writing.

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Coming into college I still had this mentality, it was the only kind of writing I knew. I was expecting this English class to be much more of the same. Throughout this semester I was proven wrong. This course has been like no other writing course I have ever had. I have learned vastly just by working in peer groups and giving and taking critique on papers. Seeing other students papers and how they write has given me insight into many new literary tools that I would have never even considered. This simple task of having other students respond to what I write helped me better understand how readers see my writing. I have never been able to hear feedback from someone who just read the paper for the first time. I have found this feedback from other students to be much more constructive than any feedback I have ever gotten from any teacher. This feedback has helped me grow immensely as a writer. It has introduced me to literary devices like quoting my own thoughts and not just words. It has made me realize how bland very, really, and like sound. In my literacy narrative I wrote He too had done very well on his paper and was eager to start the next part. If I were to write this same idea now I would write it He too had been successful with his paper and was eager to start the next section. By simply attempting to keep these words out of my writing I have forced myself to learn new ways of verbalizing the same idea. I have expanded my vocabulary by trying to keep from repeating one word excessively. All that I have learned throughout this semester and my previous English classes has culminated in this portfolio. It includes all of the major assignments that I have completed and some of the smaller ones. It is the final achievement to be attained in English 1101. I believe that from this last assignment in this class I have earned an 85. I feel like I have grown immensely as a writer from the beginning of this course to now. I have learned many new skills that will be

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able to improve my writing for years to come. This improvement does not change the fact that I could have done better. There were some classes that I was half asleep and some papers that I wrote in a hurry. There were readings that I did not complete and drafts that I did not revise. These seemingly small things had a negative impact on my writing that I may never get to fully understand. I believe I deserve an 85 because of this. I have learned a great deal this semester but I have a long way to go before I will feel that I am an A student. Within this portfolio are many different types of writing. Each of these pieces had an unique impact on my education. The High School Literacy Narrative at the beginning of the semester gave me a chance to look back at where I had come from. This essay made me reflect on the type of learning I had had in High School and made me remember what it was like to learn in that environment. This helped me see the stark contrast between that learning style and that of college. The Midterm assignment was a clever assignment that opened my eyes to how much I had already learned at that point. This essay helped me to appreciate how much I had already changed in half of a semester. It also brought me to better understand what I needed to work on to make the rest of the course even more beneficial to me. The Genre Study was much different than the other two assignments. Whereas they took a look at my present and past education this delved into a completely different field of genre. This paper caused me to look into the different genres that surround us. It made me realize just how many types of writing there are and how distinct each one is. The blog gave me many small lessons both about myself and the way I learn. It gave me chances to write about anything that I wanted which made me recognize the things I truly care about. This blog also presented topics to write about which helped me be able to voice my opinion on certain topics.

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The Reading Response Letters that I have included gave me insight into incredibly useful topics. RRL #1 was one of the first things I wrote in this course. It made me reflect on how I write and caused me to grasp that how I wrote was detrimental to my ideas. This assignment also gave me a glimpse at what was to come in this course. The second letter included, number four, allowed me to reflect on the ideas of Henry Doss. This gave me that ability to see the educational system the way Doss sees it. It was extraordinary to see the institution in a new light, in a way that I would have never seen it had I not heard of Doss ideas. The first part of the Genre Analysis assignment was the first time I had even thought about the different aspects of genres. I learned just how much work goes into each genre that we see each day. The portfolio speed write gave me a chance to write whatever I could in a limited amount of time. This assignment let me put to practice what I had already read so much about, just letting ideas flow onto the paper. The Narrative draft taught me what I can do when I hear the thoughts of those who read a paper. I got helpful advice from my group on what I could improve in this paper. Finally this Portfolio has been the single most educational assignment this whole semester. For the past few months I have written papers, blogs, and letters and learned about genres and feedback. I have learned a great deal of new things this semester and some of it has been forgotten or disregarded. This paper has shown me the importance of each individual assignment and how each one ties into one another. It has made me look at all aspects of this course and how they have changed me from the writer I was into the writer I am. It has also given me the tools for me to improve into the writer that I will be.