Walker 1

Armond Walker

Professor Julie Baker

ENGL 1301

13 April 2024

Portfolio Reflection Essay

As I took this class throughout the semester, I noticed that there were many things that I

didn’t know about writing. Due to that, I had a lot of room to learn and expand my knowledge of

the subject. There are so many aspects to this subject that I never learned about in my years of

being in English classes. Every part of this class served a purpose in expanding what I know

about the subject of English and what I know about writing my own works of literature. From the

discussion posts to the essays and also the peer reviews, I feel as though these assignments have

helped me become a better writer and a more efficient analyzer because of the different aspects

each of them touched on. This essay aims to answer the questions related to my participation in

the assignments of this class and how they have improved different aspects of my writing ability.

For starters, this class taught me more about the writing process and how important it is to

follow that process thoroughly. The first thing that stood out to me while learning more about

the writing process was how my drafts should be formed and the number of drafts I should be

writing. When we were in Week 3 of this class, we read an article called “Shitty First Drafts”,

written by Anne Lamott. The article talked about what drafts were meant to do, how many there

should be, and how they were supposed to be formed. When I read this article, I learned that

instead of just having a rough draft and a final draft, it is good to have 3 different drafts. She

mentioned how the first draft should be a “child’s draft”, just writing whatever comes to mind no

matter how messy it is (Lamott 4). This stuck with me because before, I would spend a lot of
 Walker 2

time thinking too much about my first draft, trying to make it as good as possible. I noticed when

I started writing the first draft with whatever came to mind, I was able to tweak that draft with

my advanced draft, and then make the finishing touches for my final draft by analyzing the

advanced draft and seeing what I could improve upon. Another part of the writing process I

learned about was how to implement a varied word choice and how to create better transitions

for my essay. The peer reviews we had to do after each advanced draft helped me out with this

aspect because I was able to get multiple different opinions on how I could improve my essay in

the ways I mentioned before. Now my writing process has improved and I am assured that it will

help me with my future writing assignments in other classes.

My knowledge of how I analyze different types of texts improved over this year as well.

There were three specific assignments we did in this class that I felt improved my analysis the

most. The first one involved us finding a physical document that was related to Texas A&M

International University. We then had to show the different elements like the layout, images, and

wording of the document to help communicate the author’s intent behind writing it. In the essay I

wrote for this assignment, I wrote about how the brochure used different elements like charts,

graphics, and useful information like tuition rates to appeal to the reader and show what the

school has to offer. This gave me experience with surveying different parts of documents and

figuring out the author’s intent by paying attention to key parts of the literature. Another

assignment we did was watching a spoken-word essay by Jamila Lyiscott and explaining why

she chose to pick a spoken-word essay to communicate with her audience. It was unique because

instead of analyzing words on paper, we were watching a video and breaking down features like

Lyiscott’s tone towards her audience, what her mannerisms looked like, and other parts of her

spoken-word essay that could answer the question as to why she chose a spoken-word essay. I
 Walker 3

mentioned that she might have chosen that type of essay to speak with her audience so she was

able to express her emotion and dialect in a much more effective way. It is important that she is

able to let her audience hear her dialect because the main argument of her essay was just because

someone sounds different from others does not mean they are any less articulate than them, so

she was speaking in her native tongue to prove that. The last assignment that I want to mention is

the rhetorical essay we had to write. The prompt for the essay wanted us to pick out a

peer-reviewed article and identify three rhetorical methods used in the article by the author. We

then had to explain what the methods were and how they were used to convey the author’s

audience into understanding the answer to the research question of the article. When completing

this assignment, I had to analyze the details of the author's use of evidence, logic, and

counterarguments in order to decipher if they were effective in communicating to their audience.

I chose the methods of a counterargument, ethos, and logos methods the author used to explain

his answer to the research question about houses and whether they become more valuable or less

valuable depending on the status of the golf course they are next to. There were many other

assignments that I believe helped me improve my analysis skills, but these three were the ones

that I felt impacted me the most.

I made multiple changes to my third essay while making the final revisions to it. I mainly

used instructor feedback to pinpoint the exact issues that were in the essay originally. I learned

that the organization of my body paragraphs did not match the order in which my rhetorical

choices were listed in my thesis statement. I fixed this by changing the order of the rhetorical

choices that were listed in my thesis to match the order they were featured in the body

paragraphs so that it matches what was said in my thesis statement. I also learned that according

to the instructor's feedback, my work cited was in the incorrect MLA format, so I made the
 Walker 4

necessary changes to fix that so the whole essay could be considered the correct MLA format.

MLA formatting is a big part of college writing and this class has taught me a lot about it.

When I was revising my rhetorical essay one last time, I felt that the most challenging

aspect was finding the small grammatical errors and fixing those. It may not seem challenging,

but it is easy for me to overlook simple mistakes like misspelling words or adding unnecessary

commas. I made sure to take my time while looking over the text to make sure everything looked

correct. The least challenging part about revising the essay was using my instructor’s feedback to

fix the issues that were pointed out. The instructor’s feedback that I received was very helpful

because it let me know exactly what I needed to fix and how I could fix it. Therefore, it was not

too challenging with that part of the revision.

To communicate the different course concepts I experienced to my audience, I made sure

to organize my website in a way that made it easy for them to access the material I wanted them

to see. I was sure to include examples in my writing explanations about genre analysis, visual

text analysis, and rhetorical analysis, so my audience could understand each concept easier. It

was important to me that there were no confusing parts about my website, heavily focusing on

the explanations because those are a big part of my overall reflection of my course experience.

Looking back at the course as a whole, there were multiple challenging aspects that I had

to overcome and seek help for. The main challenge I can think of was facing spells of writer's

block throughout the year when trying to write essays. Sometimes, I would find myself just

sitting in front of my computer trying to think about ways to explain my topic and form

sentences together. I think that writer’s block is a universal challenge that most people go

through when taking an English course though. On the other hand, a challenge that is more

course-specific was completing the final essays. I felt as though the final essays were challenging
 Walker 5

for me not only because of the bouts of writer’s block but also because the final essays were the

assignments that took the most effort and attention to complete. For instance, each essay had us

read and analyze an outside source. The sources I chose to analyze were a brochure promoting

Texas A&M International University for my first essay, the original Back to the Future movie

poster for my second essay, and a peer-reviewed article for my third essay. Looking at the pieces

of work took time and thorough analysis to ensure I understood what I was studying. Each piece

of literature was challenging in its own way, but I still learned a lot about the analysis of different

materials. Another course-specific challenge I experienced was the increased workload. Since

this was my first time taking a college English course, the difference in workload was something

I had to get used to. Being used to high school English classes, I was used to a lower amount of

reading and a lower amount of writing. I did get used to the difference in the amount of work

issued by this college English course, but at first, I was challenged by this aspect.

I’d say the least challenging aspect of this course was the discussion boards and peer

reviews. I found the discussion posts easy because the answers to the questions were able to be

more opinion-based. This meant that I was able to think about more ideas that I felt were

appropriate to answer the initial questions with. To add to that, they only required a minimum of

150 words per post, which I thought was fair. Overall, I felt that the discussion posts were more

laid back so I had more freedom in what I could answer the questions with, making it one of the

easier parts of the course. The peer reviews were also an easier part of the course in my opinion

because we were given questions that helped us in the analysis and feedback process. There were

a good amount of tools that were provided to help me do the peer reviews as well. For example,

our textbook provides us with examples of how MLA formatting should work, how to create

affected transitions in your writing, and more valuable information that helps when giving
 Walker 6

feedback to my peers. This course overall had a fair amount of challenging aspects and a fair

amount of easier aspects.

I feel as though this course has done a lot in terms of preparing me to become a part of the

academic writing community. Each type of assignment we did served its own purpose in

improving my writing skills and my analysis skills. The discussion posts allowed me to share my

own thoughts on a topic and provided an opportunity to connect with other classmates by

responding to them. Each essay helped me with my analysis of different kinds of literature like

articles and, brochures, and images. The essays also taught me how to create a better structure

with my writing and how to appeal to an audience more effectively. The peer reviews improved

my writing as well, making me more aware of mistakes I make and where I can improve, while

also looking at other students’ writing to broaden my knowledge of other strategies in writing

that do and do not work. Overall, this course has helped me learn many different writing skills to

become a better writer and I am looking forward to seeing how they are used in future English

classes.
 Walker 7

Works Cited

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts” Bird by Bird, 1994, pp. 4.

https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf