Portfolio.

Writer’s Role: Evaluator

Audience: UA Students, Your Current and Subsequent Writing Instructor

Genre: Portfolio

Due Dates:

· Wednesday, Nov. 30th: Portfolio Idea Proposal

· Monday, Dec. 5th: First Draft of Portfolio

· Friday, Dec. 9th: Final Portfolio due via d2l by 7:59 AM

The goal of this final portfolio is to reflect on and demonstrate your learning in this course. Kathleen Yancey, an expert in reflective writing, says writers need to know their work before they can like or critique it. Applying what we’ve learned to subsequent (and different) writing contexts depends on taking time to assess your writing practices. Evaluating your progress in English 101, it follows, should convince readers that you know your work and you can reflect on and assess your writing experiences. Project 4, as a portfolio, allows you to document your performance in this class by examining what you’ve produced this semester in relation to some of the student learning outcomes. So, too, the course has emphasized key terms that represent core concepts in writing, and they will be useful vocabulary for explaining what you’ve learned about writing.

Course Key Terms

Before beginning your portfolio, then, it is important to carefully read over the learning outcomes and key terms (as we have been doing throughout the semester). Decide which outcomes and key terms you would like to highlight; in the reflective essay, you will explain how learning is demonstrated (or areas in which you still need to improve) in the artifacts you’ve curated to represent your writing.

Task #1: Curate Portfolio Artifacts.

An important part of reflection involves reviewing and selecting samples of your writing across the semester. “Any writing” means anything you’ve written for English 101. It might be notes you made in class. It might be all of the major assignments with rough drafts. It might be one or two homework assignments that you felt had a big influence on your learning this semester. It could even be all of the homework assignments put together in a way that you think demonstrates learning outcomes.

Of course, learning is not always captured in successes. While you will predominately select writing that illustrates success in learning outcomes in the portfolio, you will also select at least one instructive failure, one example of writing that represents an outcome you have struggled with and will continue to work on. Often a critical incident with writing, or an instructive failure, prompts the best learning. With that in mind, use the following guidelines to curate a portfolio:

Both task 1 and task 2 are essential elements of a portfolio--they work together to give the reader an overall picture of your writing development and your own understanding of your writing. Therefore, you will not be graded on each component but, rather, on the portfolio as a whole. The primary questions that will guide grading of the portfolio are:

· How well is the portfolio guided by a sense of purpose? Does its contents and selection of supporting artifacts contribute to its sense of purpose?

· Does your reflective essay engage with the student learning outcomes and key terms in a substantive way?

· Does the writing in the portfolio provide sufficient and effective evidence to support the claims you make in your reflective essay?

· How well does the reflection demonstrate knowledge of genre conventions, such as mechanics, usage, and expression?

· Your portfolio should have an engaging title.

· Your reflection should be 3-4 pages and be double-spaced in MS Word and formatted in 12-pt. font with 1-inch margins.

· Your reflection should follow MLA format as described in Rules for Writers.

· All required drafts must be typed and uploaded to D2L.

Goal 1: Rhetorical Awareness. Learn strategies for analyzing texts’ audiences, purposes, and contexts as a means of developing facility in reading and writing.

1. Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to

a. identify the purposes of, intended audiences for, and arguments in a text, as situated within particular cultural, economic, and political contexts.

b. analyze the ways a text’s purposes, audiences, and contexts influence rhetorical options.

c. analyze how genres shape reading and composing practices.

d. read in ways that contribute to their rhetorical knowledge as writers.

e. respond to a variety of writing contexts calling for purposeful shifts in structure, medium, design, level of formality, tone, and/or voice.

Goal 2: Critical Thinking and Composing. Use reading and writing for purposes of critical thinking, research, problem solving, action, and participation in conversations within and across different communities.

2. Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to

a. employ a variety of research methods, including primary and/or secondary research, for purposes of inquiry.

b. evaluate the quality, appropriateness, and credibility of sources.

c. incorporate evidence, such as through summaries, paraphrases, quotations, and visuals.

d. synthesize research findings in development of an argument.

e. support ideas or positions with compelling discussion of evidence from multiple sources.

f. compose persuasive researched arguments for various audiences and purposes, and in multiple modalities.

Goal 3: Reflection and Revision. Understand composing processes as flexible and collaborative, drawing upon multiple strategies and informed by reflection.

3. Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to

a. adapt composing and revision processes for a variety of technologies and modalities.

b. produce multiple revisions on global and local levels.

c. suggest useful global and local revisions to other writers.

d. identify the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.

e. evaluate and act on peer and instructor feedback to revise their texts.

f. reflect on their progress as academic writers.

Goal 4: Conventions. Understand conventions as related to purpose, audience, and genre, including such areas as mechanics, usage, citation practices, as well as structure, style, graphics, and design.

4. Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to

a. follow appropriate conventions for grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through practice in composing and revising.

b. reflect on why genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics vary.

c. identify and effectively use variations in genre conventions, including formats and/or design features.

d. demonstrate familiarity with the concepts of intellectual property (such as fair use and copyright) that motivate documentation conventions.

e. apply citation conventions systematically in their own work.