Portfolio Reader

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

November 26, 2019

Dear Portfolio Reader:

My name is Tracy Blankinship and this semester I took English 115: Approaches to University
Writing. In this class, we created a portfolio to show our growth in our writing and
comprehension skills. Throughout the course, we read various articles including ‘letter to
Birmingham’ by Martin Luthur King Jr., ‘Two ways to belong in America’ by Bharati
Mukherjee and our main reading, ​The Motorcycle Diaries​, a memoir by Che Guvera. We
analyzed these writings and created a website on Weebly to highlight our personal work. We
wrote six progression exercises, Three Essays, and four blogs in total. In my portfolio, I will
show my Essay on Malcolm X, `Malcolm X: From a Life of Crime to a Life of Faith and
Activism’ an essay that describes his success and the reasons for it. On my Weebly website you
will see both my first and final to show my improvement thought the use of peer and personal
review. On my website, you will see my best blog post. On this blog, I discuss a Ted Talk I
found called, ‘Embracing otherness, Embracing Myself’. I chose this Ted Talk because of how
closely it went with my websites overall theme, ‘Sense of Self’. In my blog post about it wrote a
paragraph that states my opinions and thoughts on this Ted talk. In my portfolio I will also
present my favorite, as well as my personal best Progression exercise, #1.2 an essay discussing
the article ‘Two ways to Belong in America”.

I believe one of my biggest strengths in writing is structure and organization. My teachers in my

previous years of education heavily focused on Essay structure as well as sentence structure.
While writing I put a lot of focus on the outline and prewriting stage of the writing process. I like
to create a good base so when I begin to write my essay I already have all my ideas lined up. It
allows my Essays to have a good structure, a clear idea, and a nice flow. Throughout my
outlining process I make sure I completely understand the prompt before I begin writing. I make
sure to outline my thesis sentence, topic sentences, support including quotes and paraphrasing
and the main point of each paragraph. This allows me to effectively respond to writing
assignments and write all my ideas clearly in my essays.
The thing I struggle the most with when it comes to writing is grammar and mechanics. When it
comes to writing especially when it’s a topic I really like or I’m passionate about I have a lot of
ideas. Often when I write I just let my mind do the writing and a lot of the time I will make
mistakes in my grammars. I believe this problem could be fixed if I’d allow myself the time to
proofread my Essays more than once so I can make sure There are minimal mistakes in my
grammar. It’s something I’ve been working out and I hope to improve in the future to improve
the quality of my Essays.

Although I have gotten better with grammar and mechanics in my writing, I can always still
improve in the future. I think one of the things I need to start doing more is proofreading and
going over my essays more before submitting my assignment. I’m so used to only writing two
copies of my essays, the rough draft, and the final draft. If I were to give advice to myself for my
future writing I think it would be to make more copies of my Essays and not just stop at the bare
minimum. I’ve learned both through my English 115 class and my English SI to go through my
essay more in-depth. I can be a really bad procrastinator and I believe it really affects my writing
sometimes. If I gave myself that extra time instead of wait till the last minute I believe it would
really raise my essay’s to the next level. I would recommend students who take English 115 next
year to really spend time on your essays, your given time for your essay so you to actually work
on them, don’t let yourself get in the way of a good grade. If you put the time in on your essay
your grades will reflect the effort. It’s easy to get side-tracked and lazy in college. Coming into
CSUN from highschoolI’ve had to learn a lot. I’ve taken college-level AP classes in high school
however it’s still in a high school environment with instructors who still treat you as a high
school student. College is a lot more independent and one of the most important things I learned
in English 115 is how to manage my time better. I really appreciate everything we’ve done in
this class and what I’ve learned along the way. I’m really grateful and I’m going to miss this
class.

Sincerely,

Tracy Blankinship