Project 4

This final assignment has two components:

  1. An overall written reflection.
  2. An electronic portfolio.

Overall Written Reflection

Rough draft due 12/8 at the beginning of class (bring one hardcopy)

Final draft due 12/21 by 11:59pm (submit through Canvas)

In 3-4 pages (typed, Times New Roman, double-spaced, 12-pt font), write a short paper that analyzes, and makes an argument about, your growth as a writer during Comp 105. In your reflection, you will need to provide demonstrable evidence of said growth. To this end, you will need to describe, quote, and analyze specific moments from the writing you’ve done for Comp 105 over the course of the semester.

Emphasize accuracy rather than showing only accomplishments. Demonstrate your ability to see clearly your strengths and your potential growth areas as a writer. It’s also important to explain as concretely as possible how you’ll recognize future writing situations where you can apply the skills and concepts you learned in this course.

Some guidelines about the paper’s structure:

  • Begin with a general introductory paragraph that gives your reader some overall sense of the following:
    • What your relationship with writing was like in high school
    • What assumptions you had about college writing before taking COMP 105
    • What you hoped to gain from taking COMP 105
    • A thesis statement specifying how taking COMP 105 changed (or did not change) your relationship with writing and/or your growth as a writer
  • In your body paragraphs, you should address the following questions:
    • What aspects of your writing do you feel needed the most work at the beginning of the semester?
    • To what extent do you feel you improved in these growth areas?
    • What terms or concepts that you learned in the class (e.g. exigence, audience, the stasis forms, the rhetorical appeals) helped you to diagnose your problem areas and to improve as a writer?
    • As you answer the above questions, refer back to specific illustrative moments from your COMP 105 work, citing said moments as evidence of your growth as a writer. Quote and paraphrase  moments not only from your final drafts, but also from early drafts that you revised and transformed over the course of the writing process. For instance, a good tactic for a paper like this is to refer to a specific sentence or paragraph from an early draft that needed a lot of work, and then to analyze A) what was wrong with it, B) how you revised that sentence or paragraph, and C) what terms or concepts related to the course helped you to do so.
  • In your concluding paragraph (or multiple concluding paragraphs) reflect on how the skills and concepts that you’ve learned in this class (again: concepts like exigence, audience, the stasis forms, the rhetorical appeals, etc.) can be used in other, “non-composition class” writing situations. Think hard about how a totally new situation where you will be asked to write will require you to use some (not all) of these skills but in different ways—for example, if you’re asked to write a survey for your boss, or if you’re asked to write a biology/psychology/etc. research paper, or if you’re asked to write a technical report for engineering. Each case is a unique rhetorical situation with a unique exigence; what will you do when you face it?

You’ll be evaluated on the clarity of your writing, the strength of the paper’s organization/structure, and the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of your responses.

Electronic Portfolio

To be completed and published online by 11:59pm on 12/21 (No need to submit the link itself to me, since I already have the link to the WordPress where you’ve been posting your blogs. If you abandon your already-created WordPress and create a new site from scratch, though, make sure you let me know.)

Using the WordPress blog you’ve been using throughout the course, create an electronic portfolio that showcases the work you’ve done in COMP 105 this semester. Use the following really good examples (from previous semesters) for guidance:

https://ktapitus.wordpress.com/

https://jwvcomp105.wordpress.com/

For your electronic portfolio, edit your WordPress so that it includes the following:

  1. A welcome statement on the “home page.” To make this, simply make one last blog post, so that it’ll be the most recent one that appears. Your welcome statement should, in addition to introducing yourself to people visiting your electronic portfolio, give some context for the writing featured there, to give your audience a sense of what they will see. It won’t just be folks from our class who see your portfolio; imagine an audience that also includes your favorite relative, an instructor you will have for a class next semester, and one of your friends from high school. Write the welcome statement to help each of these very different audiences make sense of your portfolio.
  2. A page for your Project 1 that includes a short (one- to two-paragraph) summary of the assignment and a link to the essay itself. In your short summary, give a brief sense of what the assignment called for, reflect on any difficulties you encountered during the writing process, and anticipate any further revisions you would make if you could have another go at the essay.
  3. A page for your Project 2 that includes a short (one- to two-paragraph) summary of the assignment and a link to the essay itself. In your short summary, give a brief sense of what the assignment called for, reflect on any difficulties you encountered during the writing process, and anticipate any further revisions you would make if you could have another go at the essay.
  4. A page for your Project 3 that includes a short (one- to two-paragraph) summary of the assignment and a link to the essay itself. In your short summary, give a brief sense of what the assignment called for, reflect on any difficulties you encountered during the writing process, and anticipate any further revisions you would make if you could have another go at the essay.

You’ll be evaluated on the clarity and thoughtfulness of your “welcome statement” and three “Project” page summaries, as well as the overall visual design of your portfolio. The portfolio should be pleasing to look at (it shouldn’t assault the viewer’s senses or be difficult to read) and easy to navigate.