Dinesh 1 Dev Dinesh

Professor Ingram

English 1101

July 28, 2013

How I have grown High school vs. College was not only the major theme in this class, but also the thought that ran through my mind all through this semester. I was quite nervous when I looked through the syllabus for the first time and found that most of our grade would be coming from this eportfolio. Since I had never created an e-portfolio before, I thought that I would not do so well in this class. Having completed my e-portfolio, I have realized that this has been the greatest learning experience I have experienced in my life. The first paper I was assigned to write was called the Literacy Narrative. This was my most favorite writing piece of the semester because it got me to reflect on my entire high school career. I thought about and wrote down every single thing that happened in high school. At first I found it difficult to find an event that was not only interesting to write about, but also was a learning experience for me. The timeline we did in class helped me to organize and find the right event to write about. After I had finished doing my timeline I noticed that there were about twelve events on it. Then from there, I decided to make little branches of information about each event. I picked the events with the most branches to be the topic of my essay. That is why I included the timeline, from my notebook, in my e- portfolio.

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I decided to write about the time I helped my school set up their network the day of our final exams. At first, I wrote this paper the same way I had written all my other papers in high school. I started off with an introduction that was followed my multiple paragraphs and then a conclusion. After that I ran spell and grammar checks to make sure that there were no errors in my paper.

I thought that, that was all I had to do in order to earn a good grade on my paper. My high school influenced view soon changed after our first peer edit session. I got feedback; comments such as, You need to add more description or can you explain this a little better? I knew then that I could not keep writing the same way as I did in high school. The comments I included in my e-portfolio helped me to realize that in college, papers would not be graded strictly on grammatical errors or spelling; rather, they would be graded on content and quality of the piece. This itself proved to be one of the most difficult concepts to wrap my head around, however, it became the most crucial to understand for academic success in my college career.

I included the rough draft of my literacy narrative in my e-portfolio because it represents my high school writing skills. From then on I tried to focus more on what it was that I was writing and especially intent to portray my learning through the assignment rather than on the spelling and grammar rules that applied to my piece. I went with this new mentality and edited my literacy narrative to enhance its ideas. At first, I found this to be a very difficult task to do with former rules for writing that still lingered in my head telling me to write robotically. I found it hard to elaborate on many things I wrote about. At times I would feel like I was boring my audience with too much information about insignificant events since in prior experiences my

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goal was usually to reach a conclusion set by the teacher rather than use my own knowledge and experiences to make the audience aware of my own experience.

After I got my paper back from my teacher, there was one major comment on it that I felt was the best advice I have ever gotten in writing. On the last page of my paper Ms. Ingram wrote Show rather than tell. At that I moment I realized that I did not have to just add more description, I would have to would have to show the reader what happened. In order to show I would have to add the right amount of description as well as the right kind because adding too many empty, listed descriptions would make the paper boring and adding too little description would make the paper boring to read. The feedback I got from the second draft of my literacy narrative was very beneficial and since it served as such a key component to my advancement as a writer I decided to add it to my portfolio.

One way I revised my first draft was by rewording certain sentences so that they would make better sense. I changed a sentence that read, I remember the exact words that she used to I remember her exact words. This change, cause the paragraph to flow more smoothly. Sometimes simplifying one sentence alone, made a huge difference. Another revision I made were added descriptions about the way Ms. Adams, my teacher in the story, looked. I did not think that adding description about one character would change anything. However, after adding description about her appearance I realized that helped the readers visualize the situation a little better. I also wanted to be able to show rather than tell. I tried to implement this in my essay by saying, She would just look at us through her big round eye glasses and say rather than just stating, Ms. Adams wore glasses.

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Another writing piece I chose to add to my portfolio was probably the most confusing paper I have ever written in my life. This assignment was our Genre Case Study and this hurdle of an assignment challenged us to analyze a genre used in high school and a genre used in college. At first I did not know how to start because I was not use how to analyze a genre and the word genre was still a little vague to me. Then I thought of the coke add we had discussed in class. At first, this ad looked like any other advertisement I had seen in my life. But then when Ms. Ingram challenged us to analyze it by looking at different parts of the coke poster, I realized that the coke poster had a lot more to offer. The things that were shooting out from the coke bottle werent just Coca-Cola. There we sandwiches, cakes, toys and other things shooting out from the Coke bottle. This Coke poster implies that coke is great to drink at birthday parties or at lunch. The toys were one the poster to attract younger children to the poster. This Coke poster made me realize that everything on there was there for a purpose. I added the coke poster to my e-portfolio because it helped me understand how to rhetorically analyze works of art.

I used what I had learned in the ad analysis activity we had done in the class to write my Genre Case study paper. I first decided to make a chart that would help me organize this three part Genre Case Study assignment. I divided my paper into three sections. In the first section I wrote down everything that I gained from analyzing a five paragraph essay and in the section, followed by everything I gained from analyzing a college application essay. Then in the final section of the paper, I compared and contrasted these two genres. Since I never had to do a writing assignment that had various parts in to it, I felt overwhelmed by this Genre Case Study.

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But once I got all of my thoughts out on paper, the assignment felt lot more doable. This is why I included my three column chart in my e-portfolio.

I started writing my paper by giving the audience a summary of what the paper was about followed my analysis of different parts of the paper. While writing I did not realize how hard it would be for a reader to keep up with all the information without having a sample of the five paragraph essay on hand.

Of all the things I had to do in the Genre Case study assignment, I found analyzing a college application essay to be the most difficult thing to do. I started out analyzing the college application essay the same way I had analyzed the five paragraph essay. Then I began to analyze the various things a person usually adds to his or her college application essay rather than the structure itself.

While looking at various college application essays I noticed that college application essays really did not have a set format or structure. Different authors wrote in different ways in order to achieve the same purpose. The purpose of a college application essay is for a college applicant to be able to express why he or she should be admitted into the university.

I began to analyze everything the author of a college application essay includes in his or her paper in order to achieve this purpose. In the several college application papers I looked at I found that almost all of them had information about the authors past, current achievements and future goals. So then I divided my analysis paper between these three topics and discussed how each of these three things helps the author achieve his purpose. While writing this paper, I thought back to the Coke poster where each individual item on the Coke poster was there for a

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reason. All of those individual things together served one purpose- to sell the product. The same could be said about the new genre I was analyzing.

After I got my paper back, I went back and analyzed both genres once again. I found new information about these two genres when I analyzed them for the second time. I included the new information that I had gathered in my third draft.

Another big thing I have learned during the course of this class was how to be a good editor. In high school, we hardly ever did peer editing, but when we did do it, I did not know what to write! I did not know if I should write over someones work, or if I should write in the margins. I did not know if I should praise the author or if I should just write down everything I thought was wrong about the paper. The notes I took from reading the homework articles really helped me understand both why and how to edit. A comment that struck me was, Before editing, identify the circumstances of the paper. Up until that day I did not realize that one should grade a paper differently based on its writing stage. I learned that the first draft may have many grammatical and spelling errors that an editor may have to ignore. Another statement I really liked was, When you edit someones paper only offer suggestion no rewrites. Whenever I edited a persons paper, I did not know if I was allowed to scratch out words or sentences that did not make any sense. I understand now that the editor is not allowed to write over the authors work it is not the editors work, it is the authors. The notes I took in my notebook helped me to become a better writer and that is why I included my notes in my e-portfolio.

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Class readings were not the only pieces of writing that served as reference. The warm up activity we did on 07/03/2013 helped me understand the value of writing things down. Prior to that day, I would usually brainstorm in my head rather than on a piece of paper. Back then I thought that it was pointless to write down the ideas that I was thinking of. The warm up required us to think about and write about an event that happened while we were in high school. After thinking for about two minutes, I decided to write about the time a kid named Trevor got bullied. In my head all I could think of was the image of Trevor being punched multiple times by other students. However, when I started writing, I started remembering more and more about the incident. My vision of the incident started to broaden and I started seeing other students who were there at the event. Eventually I was able to remember my exact thoughts and feelings while I witnessed the event. I felt that warm-up was essential to my portfolios make-up. An assignment I initially dismissed in my head, turned out to be one of the ones that broadened my eyes and my mind the most.

I came into English 1101 thinking that a good paper was one that was free of any grammar or spelling errors. I did not know what it meant to peer edit or how to do it. When I wrote the first draft of my literacy narrative, I thought it deserved an A. But now, when I look back at it, I feel like it should be rewritten. The paper does not have too many mistakes however it could be revised to better achieve the purpose of the paper. After taking this class, I learned that everything in the paper, in some shape or form, has to help the author achieve his or her purpose. This is how I have grown as a writer; I now write everything to achieve a purpose. After taking this class I have learned that a paper, free of spelling errors, is useless unless it fulfills a purpose. If the purpose is to gain a reaction from the reader, then the author need to show

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rather than tell. When I revised my papers, I tried to add the right type of description so my reader would thoroughly understand the event without being bored.

This class also taught me the importance of peer editing. In high school, I never had an opportunity to revise my work or get a teachers feedback before submitting my assignment for a grade. It was a big shock to me when I saw a lot of comments on my first draft after our peer editing session. Some of the comments said, can you explain this a bit more or reword these statements. I also learned a lot from the peer editing session by seeing the different styles that people write in. Some people used short chopping sentences in their papers to gain the readers attention and other used long sentences while describe certain things in depth. While talking to my small group members about my paper, physically listening to the ideas of others, I was able to think of new styles of writing that I could implement in my own paper.

My writing has improved more in these last five weeks than it did in my four years of high school. This is all due to the write and revise system that Ms. Ingram implemented. Even though none of my work is perfect, or even close to being perfect, I have tried my best at everything I have done. This is why I think that I should deserve an A for this class. I am glad to have had the opportunity to take this class before starting college. From now on, whenever I have a paper due in a class, I will make sure to complete it days before its deadline. This way, I will have time to revise my paper. Thank you Ms. Ingram for teaching me that revision is the key to gaining success in writing and that nothing begins in a perfect state. There is always room to grow.