1 May, 2017

Dear Ms. Davis,

The Portfolio is a collection of my best writings in the last year and half.
I have chosen these topics carefully based on my knowledge and passion.
Their genres have been varied between opinion, experience, and research. I
am really proud of the collection because I think it shows what makes me the
writer I am today and lets me look at what I have accomplished and still want
to improve.

I had many different reasons for choosing the essays in my collection. I

chose my first essay from my composition class last semester with Mr. John
Andrews, who was a Ph. D. student in OSU, about if I have been chosen to
give the speech of my graduation before the graduation in the last minute. It
was a good essay that made me look forward for my graduation day. It was
one of my favorite essay I have ever written in my life because it was full of
emotions. This essay made me think what I should accomplish, learn, and try
in order to share it with people on my graduation day that will be filled by the
desire to tell everybody how great my days were in college. What the
obstacles that I have passed to arrive to this day, the day that is well known
as the best day in any students educational life. My second essay was about
a controversial political case which is the higher education in the United
States and whether it should or should not be free and accessible for
everyone. In this paper, I showed both political sides of this issue and the
reason behind each side. I have chosen this paper to include in my collection
because it is a research type paper. In addition, I used the research skills that
I learned in my composition class to get the best of my chosen sources to
support my paper without any plagiarism. I liked this paper because it gave
me the chance to be aware of the legislation, programs, and scholarships
that government, states, and companies make them available to the
students. After I knew about these opportunities, I am sure that this case in
progress day by day. This paper requires me to interview number of
American students whom were excited about the topic and the case as a
problem. My third essay was written by me in the last semester in
composition one class, and it was a new type of essay for me. It was a field
essay that required me to write about any group, association, or position I
am interested about within OSU. Since I am a Business Administration
student and want to know more about my field, I chose to write about
Business News Club that specialized in discussing different kind of news,
especially in business. It was a good choice because I had the chance to get
to know people whom I was surprised by the knowledge they have even
though they are still students. It was a rich experience that expand my
expectation for the potentials that I can achieve during my studying in
university. The forth essay I chose to include in the collection was during my
studying in English Language Institute (ELI) at my last level here in Stillwater.
It was a research essay about one of the most important passions for me
which nutrition. I wrote this research about why should we eat healthy food
because I have shocked of the poor American restaurants nutritionally. In
fact, I had expectation and knowledge of their bad status before I came to
the United States, but what I saw and try is beyond my previous
expectations. I liked it because it was my first experiment as a research
paper, and it has learned me the basics of a research paper. It helps me a lot
in my current time at college that requires many of papers of the same type.
The details in my literacy have many to do with what I have been
accomplishing and learning in my educational and knowledgeable life. I have
started reading and writing when I was six years old with a noticeable caring
from my mother. My mother was very careful of my starting because she was
a teacher and knew that the basics are very prominent. If the basics are
strong and correct, the rest of my future years in school will be good. She
was giving me practice on reading, writing, and dictation every day. I
observed the results of her caring when I saw how the students in my class
struggling in dictation quizzes. I was very good in reading and writing
because of my mother. All of this was just in Arabic language, I was not
concerning of the English subject at my first years in school. There was an
English class, but it was very basic, such as letters and few vocabularies.
English class was neglected since it is not as important as Arabic and
countable in determining the pass of the semester. When I started the
secondary class, English class became important and countable in passing
the semester. As a result of that I begun to care and increase my knowledge
about it focusing on the grammar part because that was the English class
concentration. Day by day, I became more comfortable with it by knowing its
keys, but I still considered myself ignorant in most of its grammars. I felt that
I have so many grammars to perfect and others to know about them. At high
school, the heavy English part begun, especially in grammar. My father
observed the importance of the English class and encouraged me to have an
English teacher in order to have a better level of English. Especially, when
many of the universities in Saudi Arabia started to change the studying
system into an English teaching. It means that I will have to interact with
with professors and study subjects fully in an English language. It was the
right decision to be made by my father. In the end, I owe the good status of
my literature to my parents and their concern about me.

Writing process steps is differ depending on the purpose of each

writing type. The process that I follow when I write a composition paper is not
the same as a history paper. In addition, the process I follow in writing has
been improving since I first begun writing an English paragraphs. My old
process was a random writing with unprepared axes or ideas. After that, I
have started to care more about setting an outline of each part of my essay
with its aspects in order to make sure that I have an organized essay not a
shapeless one. Certainly, the more essay and practice I write the more essay
types that need different process. The research papers process is not the
same as opinion or field paper. Since I have started writing paper in English
Language Institute, my writing has bern improving since then to become
more academic. In the last two semesters in NOC, my writing integrity has
been making progress due to the essays that require sources integrity.

Knowing the strengths and weaknesses is an efficient way to student

to get better outcomes in the next writings. As a student, I wont be able to
evaluate exactly my writing level, but I can support it by the feedback from
my teachers and professors. I think, I am good in narrowing the the topic that
the teacher gives to an aspect I am interested in, so I can write about it with
good ideas. Grammatically, I am good depending on the feed back and my
good background in it. I like to vary the expression I use on my papers on
order to avoid making the paper boring and to be creative as far as I can. In
addition, I think it is a good way to develop my level in writing. The
weaknesses that I am working to correct them are many, but I am going to
put them under observant. Lack of vocabularies sometimes prevents me
from formulating the idea that I have in my mind, but I fix it by the translator.
Even though the translator fix some of this problem, it is not like when the
vocabularies already in your mind. Also I am trying to be more independent
on the translator to think fully in English thoughts. Currently, I am working on
increasing my vocabularies and I am doing good so far.

In conclusion, writing is an endless experience that filled by lessons. It

is not just beneficial academically, it is also mentally. Now a day, I am
focusing on developing my writing and fixing its weakness academically.
Moreover, I want to write different types of writing to figure out several kind
of process because I know that every process has its lessons that will help
me perfect my writing more preparing to harder level in the University (OSU).

Sincerely,

Abdulrahman Alahmdi