Semester Task

Dear All–

It’s hard to believe but the academic year is coming to the end and it means you will have to prepare your writing portfolio, a collection of some of your old papers and a couple of new ones. Below is a more detailed explanation of what should be included in your portfolio and how it will be assessed.

Here is the explanation of what a portfolio is, what its content should be and what grading criteria I’ll use to assess your portfolios.

What is a Portfolio?

A portfolio is a purposeful, meaningful collection of works students have written throughout the semester and/or specifically for the portfolio. This collection tells a story about a student’s developmental growth, achievements, and progress over time.

What are the Purposes of a Portfolio?

The portfolio will enable you to demonstrate the range of your writing abilities and your understanding of academic writing generally.

What is the Contents of Portfolios?

Each writing portfolio must include the following materials:

• A cover memo that introduces the contents of the portfolio and explains how the sample papers demonstrate your mastery of the learning objectives of the course. This memo should reflect on the portfolio as a whole, explaining how the sample papers you’ve included illustrate your writing processes.
• Analysis of two old papers

It should be written in the form of a memo, explaining what difficulties you have experienced when writing them. You should also dwell upon the aspects of your essays you worked on in the process of their revision. Then you should single out some aspects of your work you think you have succeeded in writing well and explain what made them successful in your opinion. Finally, you should clarify what additional work on my part could help you improve the quality of your writing.

These are some of the areas you should consider writing about:

a)       Essay content

b)       Structure and organization

c)       Word choice

d)       Mechanics

e)       Style

• An essay How Has My Writing Changed that explains your strengths as a writer, and ways in which you hope to continue to develop your writing and research skills in the future. In writing this essay, you can use the following questions as your guidelines:

a)       How has your writing changed throughout the course?

b)       What do you now see as your strong/weak points and which area(s) for improvement of your writing mastery you see

c)       You can also include a paragraph, analyzing the activities done throughout the course from the point of view of the usefulness and/or uselessness for the improvement of your writing. Try to formulate, which of the activities you took part in as part of this course were useful or not and was there anything missing, i.e., something you think as important was not discussed and done (something that was not necessary was done).

• An essay based on reading an article of your choice from a recent newspaper/magazine publication.
• Overall course reflection in which you should discuss what aspects of the course and tasks you found useful and which of them you had some diffculties with, found problematic and/or unnecessary. Add your reflection about peer-editing: why/why not it was useful or not very useful and why. If you have have any suggestions about the content and/or the organisation of the course, you should also include them into your course reflection too.

Here is a checklist you can use to make sure that you have all the necessary pieces:

a)       A cover memo

b)       Essay 1: all drafts + a memo

c)       Essay 2: all drafts + a memo

d)       Essay 3: A response to a selected reading

e)       Essay 4: How has my writing changed?

f)        Overall course reflection

What is the Format of Portfolios?

• Create a separate Portfolio folder in your folder
• Link the parts of the portfolio which go together: e.g., your essay drafts and the memo discussing their advantages and drawbacks
• The cover memo should appear first.

 How will the Portfolio be assessed?

Criteria for evaluation of your portfolio: points/100

15   General organization. All required materials are included. Paper selection.

50   Paper analysis. Relevant observations. Clear organization.  Insight.

10     Analysis of the writing process.  (Essay)

10     An essay on a topic connected with some article from recent newspaper periodicals

15   Grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity of expression.

Here is a link to the portfolio Yulya Abramova, one of my students who studied last year, created:

http://acwr604.pbworks.com/w/page/53877642/A%20cover%20memo%2C%20Abramova

Have a look at it and ask me some questions if something is not clear about how to create your portfolio and/or what to pay attention to when working on this assignment.