Meghan

Kingsley Dr. Erin Dietel-McLaughlin WR 13300 6 December 2012 My writing portfolio really shows my progression as a writer throughout the

semester. I have really changed the way in which I go about starting my essays. In high school, I usually just picked a topic and immediately started writing without any significant planning beforehand. This tactic often led to papers that tended to ramble, or were unclear. In writing and rhetoric this semester, we had to plan out many of our assignments through proposals and multiple drafts. In my portfolio I included a lot of my process work including my proposals, rough outlines, and an annotated bibliography. By doing these assignments prior to actually writing the assignment, it gave my papers more organization and clarity. However, one of my weaknesses this semester was changing my topics after the planning process. But, when I changed topics, I still engaged in planning and outlining. The downside of changing topics frequently was that I had limited time for many of my papers. Had I picked a viable topic from the beginning, I think I wouldve been able to make my papers even better. Therefore, putting together the portfolio was a great opportunity for me to make improvements to my work. My portfolio shows my understanding of rhetoric and how its argumentative

and aims to persuade in almost all of my papers. In my rhetorical analysis essay I think this is extremely evident in my analysis of the different ways Lego uses stereotypes of young boys and young girls in a persuasive way. I analyzed the

different ways they used persuasive rhetoric, with the ultimate goal of selling the product, and how the Lego ads were rhetorical. My portfolio showcases my critical research, reading, and thinking skills in

the integration of sources into my rhetorical analysis essay, visual essay, and research essay. The paper that showcases these skills most fully is my research paper because it integrates the most sources and involved the most extensive researching. My research paper really showcased my thinking skills because I conducted my own study of young womens Facebook profiles. So, instead of just using existing studies, I decided to undergo my own research because the topic wasnt thoroughly examined by other sources. The research necessary for the research paper really taught me how to use all the resources available from the library and will be extremely helpful to me when conducting future research. Multimedia has played a really big role in my reading, writing, rhetoric, and

research skills this semester because it showed me that text is not limited to written form. For sources in our written papers I used multimedia sources and I really saw how powerful using different types of media was when doing the audio narrative and visual essay. Using different types of media in todays environment is crucial and this class really sharpened my technological skills. I really enjoyed the audio narrative because instead of conveying the feeling behind the narrative in only written form, I could use different tone in my voice to help the reader feel the same way I did. This was a very effective way to showcase our narratives and I found it extremely interesting. The visual essay was more persuasive than a written essay might be because instead of just telling the audience, it consisted of showing the

audience. This was a challenging, but extremely effective way of showing an argument. The audio narrative was supposed to show us how audio can be more

effective at emotionally involving an audience than text. It also made us use in-depth descriptions and effectively set the scene for our audience. The analysis assignment deepened our understanding of rhetoric and bettered our synthesizing of two separate entities. It also taught us about source integration into our papers. This paper consisted of analyzing the rhetoric of two texts, and we had to address how each of them used rhetoric and relate them together. This related to our audio narrative because instead of using our own personal rhetoric, this assignment wanted us to evaluate others use of rhetoric. The research essay required us to do in-depth research about a topic and present an argument relative to that topic. This heavily built upon the analysis essay because it required us to analyze our sources and integrate them into our paper, as we had to do briefly in the analysis paper. Lastly, the visual essay required us to present a rhetorical argument in visual form. This built upon all our previous work by the use of rhetoric, formulating an argument, and using multimedia in order to do so. Im most proud of my research paper and my audio narrative from this

semester. My audio narrative is one of my favorites because I spoke of Father Kevin, the priest at my parish who passed away, and I loved him dearly. The fact that I was so emotionally attached to my topic allowed me to create a really solid piece and I really enjoyed writing and recording it. The research paper showcases my growth as a writer really well because Id never written anything that long before, and after

revisions, Im extremely proud of my research paper. I put a lot of time, research, critical thinking, and effort into my paper and Im really pleased with the finished product. I revised my paper and changed the way I describe the young women I studied from intelligent to simply young women at US News Top Thirty Universities. This change was important because I cant make assumptions about intelligence simply based on where they go to school. Also, I made changes to the way in which I describe feminism by paraphrasing from one of my sources so my information is seen as more reliable. I also went through all of the comments and changed any problems in the paper. I really enjoyed the past semester and its amazing to look back and see how

far Ive come as a writer!