Professor Sabir's Posse

Portfolio Essay 1 Reflection on COA Fall 2013
250 words minimum

1. The narrative will look at the 18 weeks, the themes we looked at this semester: Revolutionaries and Social Change Agents.

What have you learned about yourself this semester? What have you learned about the discipline you are studying here: reading and writing that you plan to carry forth into your lifelong pursuit of learning.

Please also comment on the texts and whether or not they were helpful in this process. You can also talk about the instruction, culture of the class and the teacher. You can also offer suggestions.


Portfolio Essay 2 Reflection on the Writing Process
250-500 words

2. Look at the writing process and what you have been learning about yourself as a writer. Take two essays and talk about the planning, research and revision strategies you used. It helps to choose an early paper and compare to a later paper. Often you can more easily see the differences in your writing and a better example of mastery of certain concepts. Look at the role grammar plays in the writing process. Include here a discussion of your two MCE scores and the Stewart Pidd Experience (smile).

Also discuss skills you need to improve and how you plan to address that.

Include the Write Course Video: "Revision Strategies," the two chapters from Writing with a Thesis, in your bibliography and also cite at least one in your analysis of your revision process. Also cite your essay(s) used as examples in this second essay. This is a scholarly essay and it does count.

There is a cyber-assignments connected to the Write Course video and the Writing with a Thesis chapters, not to mention your responses to me re: the MCE. Use this writing where appropriate to write this second essay.

Additional narrative considerations for the portfolio essay:

The second essay has students look at the writing process and discuss their own writing process: the topics chosen, the information used, revision strategies, writing as a process. This should include a definition of the difference between editing and revising and a value statement on the place for both in composition.

I am really interested in discourse about audience and how that shapes or determines how the writer approaches her topic.

I am also interested in discussion of the revision process, and whether or not seeing writing as a work in progress or a draft, liberates or stagnates the creative process. (Students are to use examples from their writing to illustrate these points.)

I'd also like students to think about and give at three specific ways how they have grown as writers and thinkers this semester. Essay 1 is about 250 words. Essay 2 will probably be a bit longer (250-500 words) since you are citing your essays and scholarly sources. should be minimally

Give your essays a title.