Reflective Portfolio Letter

Reflective Portfolio Letter

Dear, Members of the First Year Writing Assessment Committee,

In my past years of writing I have seen myself develop into a well disciplined and patient writer. However, I have seen myself significantly improve and mature as a writer over the past few months more than I have in the past four years. I view writing as an open doorway full of ideas, feelings, and thoughts weaved together simply for creating a masterpiece. Before entering college English 1010, high school students are conditioned to write required papers and assignments without having the ability to “put you’re your own opinions and feelings in a paper.” Fortuantly,I have been given the opportunity at The University of Memphis to express myself in writing

This gives me a jump start, or flow of ideas that can later on benefit my paper. In the article, Writing What Matters: A Students’ Struggle to Bridge the Academic/Personal Divide Emily Strasser uses the following sentence to highlight and pinpoint the real true value of writing “Writing can and should be much more than sophisticated sentence structure and nuanced word choices. The devices of grammar and rhetoric remain superficial skills until a writer employs them to express important and powerful feelings, thoughts and ideas” (WaW Pg.200). I enjoy writing about myself because it helps me express my feelings. A paper may include correct grammar and word-context, but until the writer can intertwine powerful thoughts and feelings into the work, the writer is unable to accomplish the overall intended goal.

My first assigned paper in English 1010 was a Literacy Narrative. The goal of this assignment was to properly inform and describe the personal background of he or she’s experiences in

When I was first introduced to the topic of a discourse community I began overwhelmed with confusion. As the course progressed I began to grasp the aspect of the topic. In addition, I found that the writing process was not as complex and time consuming as the other assigned writing this semester. Thus, making it an easier and more enjoyable experience overall. I did exceptionally well on this paper, earning a five out of six because I put the most effort into it, becoming my best written piece. Not only did I work extremely hard to include each speciation of the prompt that was listed, I was also given the opportunity to self-grade this assignment. This gives the students the opportunity to show the professor what grade I thought I earned. I spent the most time on my paper focusing on describing and explaining the particular subjects that I would be covering. In my opinion, breaking down what a genre and lexis is and describing to my audience in how they both are applied to each and every discourse community gave my paper and reader a more organized and informative analysis. Not only did I provide a good description of the two, I also included examples from Swales by using the book Writing about Writing. For example, I used the following quote from the article, The Concept of Discourse Community to blend my researched information with Swales’ interpretations on what makes a discourse community. Using the book as a textual