Bryson Banks

English Department
Cal State Northridge
18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge, CA 91330

December 11, 2018

Dear Portfolio Reader:

Welcome to my portfolio that I have created for my English 113 A-Class. So there are a

few things included in my portfolio one of them being this letter that you are reading now to give

you a little background insight on what else is included in my portfolio so to start something else

that is included is one of my out of class essay that I wrote where I talk about Iran and which

policy course within the JCPOA is best for benefiting itself with the United States. And it goes

into really good detail with other countries and how the president is affecting the situation. Also

it includes my rough draft and my final draft so you can see the differences on how my essay has

progressed and it follows the same format for my second essay that we did out of class however

this one has a different topic this topic has to do with the book we read in class Persepolis 2 and

the prompt that I’m following for this second out of class essay is has the book conceive you to

revise your own preconceived notion of Iran and Iranians? And this both includes my rough draft

and final draft to show the differences again on how it has progressed. The other two things that I

have included in my portfolio are my progression exercises The first progression that I chose had

to do with me describing a picture through words so that a person reading my words would be

able to create the picture in their mind and draw it out. And the second progression that I chose

has to do with a set of stories that we read in class more specifically Zen stories and it was my

letter to a friend explaining how one of the stories related to them.

 So both of my essays follow the MLA format with 12 point font, Times New Roman. I believe

both of my essays are very strong and well organized and I’ve used all of the resources that have

been provided to me by my 113 A professor and SI leader. Both of my essays clearly follow the

prompts and give enough information with citations to complete the assignment.

I do believe through all my papers the challenge that I had was my thesis is making sure that it

was clear and well driven throughout the whole paper but other than that I don’t feel like I have a

problem getting my words across I think another thing that needs more work in my writing

would have to be my punctuation and making sure that I have the correct commas and periods in

all of the right places. But I did use a few strategies that my SI leader provided for me one of

them being how to write a well-driven thesis by using a specific format that she showed us in

class.

Overall the advice I would give myself in the future is to ask for help and listen to what people

say and it will help you write your paper one thing that I definitely can reflect on from learning

this semester was there is a big difference in writing a college level paper versus a high school

level paper. College level papers require way more work and they’re way more articulate and

that is something that I have found very interesting to me because now the papers have taken an

interest to you before I was just writing prompts that were provided for me because that’s all the

teacher wanted now writing In college the papers have to do with what you want and how you

wanna write it so I have taken a lot more pride in writing each of my papers now. The

recommendations I would give anyone getting ready to take English 113A would be to go to the

LRC, go to all of the writing labs and learn from what they are saying because it really does help

you at the end of the day.

Sincerely,

Bryson Banks