The portfolio is an opportunity for you to demonstrate the critical thinking, reading, and writing knowledge you’ve developed, to reflect on how you have changed as a reader and writer, to assess how you can still grow as a reader and writer, and to describe how you can apply the knowledge and skills from this class in other academic, professional, and personal context. Your portfolio will contain examples of your work in this course, and you will use evidence from your work to illustrate what you have learned in this class.
Your course portfolio contains several different elements. Your portfolio must contain:
1. Portfolio cover letter
The portfolio cover letter demonstrates who you are as a reader and writer to your reader. The cover letter should be 500-750 words long, and it can be addressed to your future writing instructor. The content of your cover letter should include the following:
Identify your strengths and areas for improvement as a writer using evidence from the work contained in the rest of the portfolio. For example, if you think that one of your strengths is clear and concise language, then you should quote and analyze example sentences from your major writing projects that would demonstrate that language.
Establish goals for how you want to continue to develop as a writer.
Explain how you will use what you’ve learned in this class about critical thinking, reading, and writing in other academic, professional, and personal situations (for example, how will you apply what you’ve learned in this class to other classes in your major or in your workplace).
2. Major writing projects
the portfolio should include the following:
The assignment prompts for Writing Projects 1, 2, and 3
Your submission for Writing Projects 1, 2, and 3
These submissions will help contextualize the portfolio revision letters, and you can also use excerpts from your writing projects as evidence in your reflective cover letter.
3. Revision letters for all major writing projects
For each of the major writing projects that you include in the portfolio, you will write a 500-word revision letter to accompany each major writing project (a total of 3 revision letters). In your revision letter, you should:
Explain the strengths and weaknesses of your initial submission by addressing your instructor feedback, peer feedback, and your own assessment now that you have developed as a writer. You should also
Explain how you would rewrite this assignment now. You will not actually need to revise your writing project, but you will need to explain in detail what changes you would make based on your draft’s strengths and weaknesses and what effect these changes would have on the draft. For example, if you think that the topic of Writing Project 1 was not engaging to the reader, you would explain in detail why the topic was not engaging, what your new topic would be, and why this new topic would be an improvement.
Submission:
Please put together your cover letter and the three revision letters into one document (use page breaks and headings) and submit it as a Word or PDF file.
