Sadler 1

Erin Sadler
Professor Campbell
UWRT 1101
2 December 2014

Dear Reader,
Throughout the course of the semester, our class was to complete different kinds of
assignments to enhance our knowledge on reading, writing, and literacy. There were two
informal writing assignments- daybook entries and blog posts. For the daybook entries, the
students were to answer a prompt that we were given in class (almost every time we met for class
we would have a daybook entry) and write for a couple of minutes, saying as much as we can
about the prompt/ topic. About every week, students were to write a blog post on a blog website
that they created at the beginning of the semester and the blog post was a reaction/ review of a
short clip or reading that was assigned. Students were also assigned three major writing
assignments (not including this one) throughout the course of the semester. These major
assignments were the genre analysis assignment, the literacy assignment, and the miniethnography assignment. For the genre analysis assignment, students were to pick a work from a
genre and explain how it fits in that genre, talk about characteristics for that genre, compare it to
another work of the same genre, and make changes to adapt the original chosen work to another
genre. The literacy assignment was an essay where students were to discuss how they struggled
with literacy at some point in their life. For the mini-ethnography assignment, members of the
class were to choose a group of people who have a common interest. After a student chose a
group, the student was to then observe this group at least two times when the group met and
write in their essay about the group and their observations. Finally, the ePortfolio (which

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includes this essay) was the last part of the semester. For the ePortfolio, the directions were to
create a website and make a compiliation of informal assignments, the three major essays, peer
review, revised work, this essay, and to then reflect on everything.
My most important work of the semester was the ePortfolio. I believe that this is my most
important work because it is a compilation of all of the work we have done this semester.
Throughout this portfolio of the semester, one can see how I have improved in my writing and
literacy skills. When looking at any type of assignments that were completed during the course
of the semester, it is obvious to see my improvement from the first assignment to the final
assignment. Also, this portfolio is a major part of our grade for the semester for this course, so
that makes it very important as well.
Looking through my portfolio, I can definitely tell that I have improved overall through
my writing. I reflected on my daybook entries from the beginning of the year to our most recent
entry. I noticed that my answers became more in-depth when describing something. A lot of my
earlier entries had many repetitions of the same idea, just stated in different ways because I could
not think of things to write about. Sometimes I still struggle with thinking about things to write
about, however it has improved greatly since the start of the semester. For example, the prompt
for one of the first daybook entries we did was Reading is. I was running out of ideas and
things to say so I started writing things like reading is super boring, I hate reading, and its
my least favorite thing to do. Looking at my more recent blog entries, I noticed that I do not
write things like that anymore and my entries are more in-depth. Daybook entries were actually
not something I enjoyed. I am someone who needs time to think and gather my thoughts for a
few minutes in order to form what I want to say. Yet, with the daybook entries, I did not have
time to do that. I had to quickly form ideas, thoughts, and opinions and jot them down, which

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that is not something that I like to do. Reviewing my blogs, my other informal writing
assignment, I noticed that they had improved from the beginning of the semester to the end. I
believe that if someone looks through my blog posts, they will notice this, as well. At first, I
found it difficult to form an opinion on the matter and then write about why I feel that way about
it. As the semester went along, I found it easier to do so. The two blog posts I chose to use for
this ePortfolio were both from the middle to the end of the semester and I believe that these two
blog posts were my best posts during the semester. From the blog assignment, I learned that I do
like blogging but I did not like the topics of which I had to blog about. The topics of most of the
blogs were simply things that I did not have great interest in.
I remember when I was writing my three major assignments, before this one, that I had
trouble making the first and second assignment reach the necessary length. For the genre analysis
paper, our first paper, I barely made the necessary 3 page length and my essay even included a
picture. For the second essay, the literacy assignment, I only slightly exceeded the assigned
minimum length for the paper. However, on the third assignment, the mini-ethnography, I was
able to meet and exceed the required minimum length of the essay with no trouble at all. I
believe that this is because I had trouble going into detail on my first two assignments and did
better with detail on my third assignment (though I still could have gone into depth even more on
the third assignment). Even though I have improved some with detail, I still would consider
being descriptive a weakness of mine and something that I struggle with. Although I may have
struggled some, I actually did enjoy writing the papers. I know a lot of people do not like to
write, but I do not mind it one bit! I am even considering minoring in Journalism. My favorite
writing assignment was the mini-ethnography. I liked how I was able to talk about my sorority;
my sorority means a lot to me. The fact that I was able to observe and do a little bit of research

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on my sorority was another reason I enjoyed this assignment. I love to conduct research and I
enjoy making observations, people-watching, and taking in my surroundings.
Throughout the semester, I even improved in peer review and peer editing! At the
beginning of the semester, I noticed that most of my comments I made about my peers work had
to do with grammar and not the actual content of the paper- which is the most important part. By
the time I was peer editing for our third essay, the mini-ethnography, I was starting to make more
corrections on content of the paper and made less comments on spelling and grammar. However,
I still feel like I struggle with giving feedback during peer editing, and that can be considered
another weakness of mine. I would say that one of my strengths would be spelling and grammar.
I know that grammar is something that a lot of people have trouble with, but I am usually a good
speller and use correct grammar most of the time (or at least in my opinion I do). Maybe the fact
that I excel in spelling and grammar compared to some others is a reason why I used to make a
lot of grammaer/ spelling comments on my peers work during peer editing. I guess another
strength of mine could be writing papers in general. I am a decent writer, not the best, but I know
that I am better in writing than most other subjects (for example: math).
I have learned and improved a lot from taking this course. I learned a lot about literacythat it is not just reading and writing like I originally thought before this course. Literacy can be
defined as knowledge in a specified area. I learned that one may be literate in a subject or area
that has nothing to do with literature. I realized that without literacy, we would be nowhere in
life. Communication is part of literacy and no civil society would be able to thrive without it. I
did not value literacy or understand the worth of literacy until this course. I have definitely
improved as a writer and in my writing during this semester. I learned how to create a website
and make a portfolio- this is the first for me for both of those. I am glad I had to take this course

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and I am glad that I had Professor Campbell as a teacher, he truly made the class great. I enjoyed
this semester and this course.