Reflective Essay & Portfolio Introduction

Your last writing assignment is a formal essay in which you will introduce yourself to the portfolio assessment committee, the instructors who will read your final writing portfolio. You should approach this assignment with two topics in mind: first, a reflection and self-evaluation, and second, an introduction to the writings in your portfolio.

Reflection and self-evaluation: Think about, or “reflect on,” what you have learned about writing, and about yourself as a writer, this quarter in Linguistics 2. Don’t be modest! Here are some topics you might include:

Writing Topics: Which of the Tasks do you think helped you develop your ability as a writer? Which were most interesting, or most fun?

Readings and videos. Which readings and videos did you most enjoy or find most interesting? Were there any readings you found difficult or uninteresting? Did the readings help you get ideas with which to develop your essays? Did they help you to better understand the topics on which you wrote?

Eye On Editing 2. What did you learn about grammar and editing skills? Did you learn anything about yourself as a writer? Did the grammar points and editing strategies help you write clearer, more error-free sentences?

Class discussion. How helpful were the small-group discussions with your classmates? Did you learn from your classmates or get more ideas that later helped you develop your essays?

Tutoring. How useful were your sessions with our CLAS tutor? What did you learn? In what ways did your writing improve after sessions with the tutor?

Conferencing. Were the conferences helpful? What did you learn from them?

Peer response. Did you enjoy reading your classmates’ essays? Did you learn anything useful from their responses? Did you learn anything from having to respond to your partner’s writing? How easy or difficult was this task? How well do you think you did as a responder?

Portfolio introduction: Introduce your portfolio to the portfolio assessment committee. Which essay represents your best work this quarter? Briefly explain each of the out-of-class essays and the mid-term essay. What was your topic? What was your thesis?

Format: Give your essay a title, a heading and everything else that you would do with any other formal essay. The total length of the essay should be two to three pages.

Write your essay in a series of at least two drafts. Bring your first draft to Jacob or another CLAS tutor. Then revise it, and print out another draft. As always, include all your rough drafts along with your final draft, stapling the drafts together in reverse chronological order.