Dwyer 1 Brenna Dwyer Suzanne Ingram English 1103-036 3 December 2012 Portfolio Essay English 1103 is by far the

most productive English class I have ever taken. Throughout my high school career, English was all about movies and books. Reading a novel just to find its literary elements, or analyzing a poem just for the purpose of dissecting it is pretty much a summary of high school English. But English 1103 has been much different. In a way, it has been more of a hands on type of class. By that I mean, instead of reading how to write a productive essay we actually go ahead and write one. Then after it is written, we have our peers give us feedback on how to improve our work. Personally, I feel that is the best way to learn. To me, peer editing groups was a major highlight of the class. I say that because in a typical English class the only person other than ourselves who reads our work would be the teacher. True, it is important to receive constructive criticism from a more educated being, but I feel that it may not always be the most helpful when trying to target a more common audience. English professors typically have a more sophisticated vocabulary and higher understanding of formal writing, but if I am trying to reach an audience that does not have the same education I find it very beneficial to see if my peers can understand. If my group members can clearly understand my paper, most likely my audience will be able to as well. I also enjoy the concept of a portfolio based class. To be graded on improvement is a better method than being graded on our talent of writing in my opinion. Writing does not

Dwyer 2 always come naturally to me, especially when writing about a subject that does not capture my passion. When it came time for my final paper I did choose a topic that slightly interested me, but I was not able to give it the same kind of passion as I would a paper about a topic closer to my heart. But to be graded on how we improve from one draft to the other is a very effect form of grading. It shows how well we communicate with our peers and how well we follow and apply their criticism. This is something that I have never found in any other English class in the past. The concept of being graded based on improvement rather than talent is shown mainly in my three sided essay. I say this because this was not an assignment that came easy to me. I understood what the prompt was asking, but at the same time I did not. I know that sounds pretty crazy! To be more specific, I understood enough to not have any questions but I found it very difficult when starting to do the actual assignment. I was not sure what three groups to look into or how to organize this paper. I found two groups that had very similar views and I was not sure if I should have grouped them together into one group or left them separate. My first draft had a lot missing from it, but after consulting with peers other than my group members I believe I made a big improvement. I feel my What Its Like To Be You essay really shows my engagement in the course more so than any other piece of work. I say this because it ties together many different aspects of the class. First, it has to do a lot with the book, Peace, Butter and Jelly, which is a book that our class dealt with. We had class discussions about the poems David had written throughout his book and then we added our own into our essays. Also, the topic of the essay in general was very heavily influenced by this book. This topic, to the reader, may seem like an informal writing assignment but that is not true at all. We were given a

Dwyer 3 prompt that was needed to be followed and the essay had to have structure to it. I believe it was a very formal paper. My annotated bibliography shows my engagement in my peer group. I say this because my first draft had many faults to it. My citations were not all done correctly; they were not in alphabetical order, nor did I elaborate well enough in each description in my first draft. After consulting with my group I received some comments about what needed to be improved and by the second draft it was almost a completely different piece of work. I really listened to what my peers had to say. This was one of my favorite assignments because when it came time for my final paper it was super helpful. It was great to have an organized list of each source and a description of what each source included. I organized my portfolio into different tabs. I have a tab for each major assignment making them easy to find. I then made a tabs labeled feedback , misc., helpful others and writers notebook. In my feedback tab I included first draft assignments containing feedback from my peers. I had saved all of my drafts then scanned them into the computer. Under misc. I scanned papers I found in my English folder that helped me with my assignments. One assignment under that tab is a concept map that we had made in our group in the beginning of the semester. It is a map about health. I found this map to help me a lot when trying to decide on a topic for my research. When I first thought about the topic of health I was thinking mainly of being sick or eating right and staying active. That is a subject that does not interest me, but when we made this concept map it opened my mind to other subjects of health I would not have originally thought of. I also included drafts of my thesis statement for my research essay. I had written multiple thesis statements and read them allowed to myself and other group members before deciding which one I liked best.

Dwyer 4 The Helpful others tab includes a handout we got in class, as well as the syllabus for the class. They were papers that I found most helpful when navigating my way through English 1103. Finally under Writers notebook I included scanned pages from my writers notebook. I decided to organize my Weebly page this way because it seemed the most organized in my opinion. It was an easy way for me to keep track of work that I had already uploaded and what needed to be done. In all honesty I found this class to be on the difficult side. Being that it is English 1103 I know that should have been expected. Keeping up with assignments and due dates was a difficult task for me, and especially when I found certain things to be of no value to my overall English experience. For example, I did not think that the blog posts were very effective in anyway. I found them to be more annoying than anything else. True they did not take up a lot of time so I should not be complaining, but they did nothing for me. There were a lot of assignments to keep up with and I did not think we had much time to do them. I am not good with managing time so I found that to be difficult to me personally. If I were to give myself a grade for this class I would give me a low B. I will admit that I have been lazy in some ways and I was not always prepared for class. I had four absences, though out of my control, they do not reflect well on my dedication to the class. I had not purchased the text book until far into the semester so I did not do many of the required readings. But that was more of a money issue than anything else. I do not always put school first and that proved to be true many times through out this course. I do not believe I deserve a C though because I really did try as hard as I could despite certain circumstances I was under. Even if an assignment was late I still always had it done. I also believe that I provided beneficial feedback to the other members of my peer group.

Dwyer 5 English 1103 has definitely been very different from any other class I have attended in the past. If I could have every English class be like this for the rest of my educational career that would be okay with me. I enjoyed being a student in your class very much. If I said this was not the most effective English class I have ever had, I would definitely be lying. Never in the past have I been able to say that I can take something with me when I leave the class. The things that I learned throughout this semester will prove to be helpful to me in the years to come, I am sure of that. It is all too often that we take classes that we feel are a waste of our time, but in English 1103 that is not the case.