Final Portfolio & Reflection

For this assignment, you’re going to create a collection of your best work from the semester. This will include revised final drafts of your first two essays, your final draft of Essay Three, and your Reflection essay.

As always, your portfolio work must be typed and use MLA format, which includes citing and documenting all sources. You must use 12 pt Times New Roman font and your work must be double-spaced.

Due Date

Your Final Portfolio will be due in electronic form at 11:59PM on Friday, Week 16.

Detailed Description

This assignment has lots of moving parts, so read these instrucutions carefully.

As this class is writing-intensive, we have spent the semester writing, peer-reviewing, and revising formal essay assignments. Now that you have received feedback both from your peers and me, your job is to revise each of your first two essays into a final, polished product.

I expect to see essays that are technically polished as well as substantively polished. Technically polished means perfect MLA format, technically sound grammar, spelling, syntax, etc. Substantively polished means that your argument is clear and sound, your organization makes sense, your work is overall cohesive and not rambling, and that you have not only addressed my comments, but also have found ways in which to apply my feedback to parts of your essays that I have not explicitly marked. Substantive revision means revising at the conceptual level, not only the sentence level.

Include Essay 3 in your Final Portfolio.

Finally, your portfolio will contain a 1-2 page Reflection essay in which you will both reflect on your composition and revision process and articulate the specific writing choices you have made and why. You should address the following issues: How are each of your revisions improving upon your original work? What improvements have you made in your writing process overall? Your revision process? Do you feel like a stronger writer at the end of the semester, and why? What parts of your writing/revising process still need work? What do you see as your strengths and weaknesses as a writer? Overall, has your relationship to writing changed over the semester? How and why? This is your opportunity to show off the hard work you have done in revision — take it seriously.