Student sample

Dear Portfolio Readers:

When I signed up for English 11 I was intrigued by the idea that I would have a medium in which to put my thoughts on paper and have them critiqued and graded as a means to improve my writing.  I was also nervous as it had been quite a few years since I had enrolled in a college level English course, especially one aimed so specifically at writing.  In my professional career my writing never reached beyond internal memos and e-mails, so to have the opportunity to grow and learn as a writer was exciting.  On a personal level I would find myself writing drafts of short stories that never went anywhere.  Those that did read them would compliment on my flow and style but mostly they all had the same comment.  I tend to be a bit of a rambler and run on sentences abounded in my writing.  So I was eager to receive feedback and improve on this weakness.  Another problem is that I tend to just sit down and start to write without having a plan about where the composition was going.  Through this class I was able to clearly define a layout from start to end that fit my needs and writing style in order to present a cohesive final product.  I couldn’t be more thrilled with the grades that I received throughout the semester and I would like to share three of those works with you.  They are varied in tone and subject matter and I truly hope that you enjoy reading them.

My opening submission was from our first assignment, the personal essay.  For my topic I chose to tell my “coming out” story as a gay man.  Obviously this is something that is very personal and private, but something I feel is important to share with others.  To anyone that has gone through this the process can certainly be filled with mixed emotions.  I wanted to be able to share those emotions and the experience with my classmates.  I feel that my personal essay shows that I have a clear understanding of the importance of showing a mix of specific details with general propositions.  When reading pay close attention to the description of actually coming out to my family over dinner.  This section I feel is very vivid and causes the reader to want to continue to see what the end results will be.

My second submission is a text-wrestling essay.  Here we were given a choice of articles in which to read and summarize.  Once we had our summarization in place we were required to provide some type of response to what we had read.  In light of the recent news on health care reform I selected an article on this very issue.  Not only was the article enlightening but it also allowed me the opportunity to learn how to properly evaluate source material.  This essay was a multi-step process, one that I feel allowed me to be successful in the final outcome.  By summarizing the article it made me more aware of how to develop critical reading skills to make sure that I understood what the main points of the article were.  The text-wrestling essay certainly challenged me to maintain that my thoughts be clear and concise.  By following this structure it made it easier to distinguish where the summarization ended and my thoughts about the piece began.  I feel that in this type of paper one needs to have a clear voice as to not confuse the reader.

My last submission is an annotation essay.  I have chosen this piece, as it was probably the most difficult assignment that I had in this course.  Because the paper was researched base it required me to restructure my thinking in order to still find the flow that comes naturally to me when I’m free writing.  Being a research project it required critical reading and understanding of the source material.  I had done research papers before but using the knowledge that I had gained from the previous assignments made this task a bit easier to accomplish.  I am also submitting this piece as it was one of our last assignments and I feel brings together everything that I have learned over the last semester.  Perhaps the most important though was finally being able to identify and overcome my use of run on sentences.  Success!

I feel that I have learned a lot from this course that I can use in both my academic, personal, and professional lives.  The two most important things that I have taken away from this course are proper sentence structure and how to appropriately organize a paper from beginning to end.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy reading these works as much as I have enjoyed writing and developing them.

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