Reflective Paper
Composition Project 3: Writing Portfolio
Your Writing Portfolio is an online space where you gather pieces of your writing and make an argument about how those pieces demonstrate significant development of your writing, your thinking, and/or your research skills. It is also a place where you can address more specifically your relationship to the goals of the course. You will select one of the FWP Outcomes that resonates with you, and you will use reflective analysis as a tool to closely examine a variety of your own compositions over a period of time.
Reflective analysis helps you to make an evidence-based argument about yourself, a skill that will benefit you not only here at Drexel, but also outside of Drexel. In your personal, academic, and professional life, it will be important to establish and reflect on goals, to periodically examine what you have accomplished, and to ask critical questions about your learning: What did I hope to accomplish in this class/project/ experience? How did I grow as a person, scholar, or professional? What evidence do I have for that growth? How does this growth prepare me for what is next? In many contexts, you will be asked to discuss, either in person or in writing, what kind of student or employee you will be. In these contexts, it is reflective analysis that will allow you to examine your experience for the evidence you need to construct clear and honest answers for yourself and others.
As you move through the FWP sequence, the Writing Portfolio will give you lots of practice in doing reflective analysis, which will help you to work toward two of the FWP Outcomes (and others, too):
1. Students will reflect on their own and others’ writing and communication processes and practices. They will learn that the term “writer” applies to themselves and their peers.
2. Students will use writing to embrace complexity and think about open-ended questions.
The skills you gain by closely examining your compositions, and by making larger claims about your writing abilities based on the compositions you include, will help to prepare you for the reflective analysis you will be asked to do later in your academic and professional life.
English 103 Writing Portfolio and Reflective Analysis Assignment
Your Reflective Analysis should accomplish four tasks:
1. It should make an argument about your writing development. Read the FWP Outcomes and choose ONE of the Outcomes as the focus for your argument. You have lots of options here.
2. It should use pieces of your own writing as evidence for your argument. Specifically, you should integrate the following compositions as sources in your analysis:
a. 1 major project from 101
b. 1 major project from 102
c. 1 major project from 103
d. 2 informal compositions from 101, 102, or 103
e. Any other supporting compositions you would like to use
3. It should do “meta-analysis” of those artifacts as it makes its argument. “Meta-analysis” is your examination of your own work, your writing-about-your-writing.
4. It should be directed to a specific audience: Professional employer, friend, teacher, parent or guardian, future child, yourself…you choose.
Citing Your Own Writing:
In your Reflective Analysis, you should, of course, provide proper in-text citation of your sources, just as you would with any other source in a composition. In this case, however, your sources are your own compositions; so, you’ll be citing yourself. Here is an example:
In my second project for English 101, I discuss the impact of drafting on my writing development: “I have always drafted because I have been required to. But I really wanted to reflect analytically on how the process of drafting actually impacted my overall writing development. Was I becoming a ‘better’ writer?” (“Drafting and Development” 1).
Additionally, you should include full citations in a Works Cited. Here’s how:
Works Cited
Last name, First name. “Title of Project.” Course Title. Professor ______ _______. Department,
Institution. Date project was submitted. Form of Media (Print, Web, etc.).
—. “Title of Project.” Course Title. Professor ______ _______. Department,
Institution. Date project was submitted. Form of Media (Print, Web, etc.).
And so on…
Organizing Your Compositions in iWebfolio:
1. Create each composition (or “artifact”) as an Item in iWebfolio, and add a preface to the Item in which you explain its original context (when it was written, in what situation, and for what purpose or in response to what). Note: In iWebfolio, Items are different from Files in that Items are created and formatted to be viewed within the portfolio, while Files are linked to and must be downloaded; unless we arrange otherwise (in the case of an unusual text that can’t be represented as an Item), all of your artifacts in the portfolio should be Items.
2. Within your Drexel Writing Portfolio, add your artifacts to the English 103 Category of your portfolio using Add Attachment (and then select Item in the pull-down menu to view Items you’ve created).
3. Add your Reflective Analysis to the main body of the English 103 area of the portfolio using the Edit feature.
Keep in Mind
Your reflection is not a place to try to make your professor feel good about your growth as a writer; it is a space for your honest reflection about your own work. Keep your focus on the argument you have established and use the compositions you have provided as evidence.
Drexel First-Year Writing Program Learning Outcomes for English 103
Writing and thinking process
1) Working from literary texts, students will learn the terminology, rhetorical strategies, and
practical approaches of writing analytically.
Assessment/Deliverables:
•Students will demonstrate their knowledge of and skills with these terms, strategies, and approaches in at least two major assignments and several minor writing assignments.
•Through assignments/class discussions, students will demonstrate an understanding of themes in literary texts and demonstrate fluency with appropriate concepts and terms of literary analysis.
2) Students will practice and refine their ability to write extemporaneously. Assessment/Deliverable:
•As a major grade, students will complete an in-class written examination.
3) Students will apply the writing process and revision to the creation of analytical projects.
Assessment/Deliverables:
•Students will complete at least two substantive written assignments.
•Students will create and revise at least one substantive written assignment guided by instructor and peer rough draft comments (instructors’ evaluations can be delivered via written comments, verbal comments, and/or conferencing).
•Students will meet with their instructor at least once to discuss a writing assignment.
4) Students will continue to reflect on their own and others’ writing and communication
processes and practices.
Assessment/Deliverables:
•Students will conduct in-depth, well-structured peer review of other students’ written work. Peer reviews will be graded or will “count” in some way in the course grade, demonstrating the value of the review both to the reviewer and to the student being reviewed.
•Guided by their instructor, students will create a reflective analysis for a writing portfolio that examines the portfolio materials in relationship to the FWP Outcomes and demonstrates their ability to make rhetorical choices about how they present themselves to external audiences.
5) Students will improve their critical thinking skills through assignments that challenge their
ability to critically analyze literary texts.
Assessment/Deliverable:
•Students will complete assignments demonstrating critical thinking skills, especially those demonstrating an awareness of the complexity of literary texts.
6) Students will reinforce their understanding that grammatical and mechanical errors detract
from achieving their communication purpose.
Assessment/Deliverable:
•Students will demonstrate in several assignments their ability to write with minimal grammatical and mechanical errors.
7) Students will continue to use writing technologies, i.e., digital writing and communications
tools, for a variety of writing purposes and to address a range of audiences.
Assessment/Deliverables:
•Students will complete at least one assignment that uses a multi-media component, such as a video, podcast, or Web site.
•Students will use digital technologies to compose, edit, and disseminate their texts.
8) Students will reinforce their understanding of the goals and means of course assessment.
Assessment/Deliverable:
•Through informal writing, portfolio work, conferences, and/or class discussion, students will articulate the course goals and how each assignment fits these goals.
Use of research and evidence
9) Students will reinforce their understanding of and fluency with the following citation and
use of research/evidence concepts and terms: attributive tags, quoting, paraphrasing,
summarizing, annotation, block quotes, ellipses, parenthetical citations, indirect sources,
integrity.
Assessment/Deliverable:
•Several course assignments, quizzes, and/or class discussions will focus on these concepts, and students will use terms appropriately throughout the course.
10) Students will continue to demonstrate that they can integrate their ideas with the ideas of
others.
Assessment/Deliverable:
•Through their written work students will demonstrate the ability to access, evaluate, paraphrase, and use fairly and effectively information from a variety of sources.
11) Students will reinforce their ability to cite a variety of sources—scholarly, non-scholarly,
print, Web—accurately using MLA format. They will continue to see citation as a choice of
using language appropriate to a particular audience.
Assessment/Deliverables:
•Students will demonstrate the ability to support an argument about literature with careful and appropriate use of literary texts.
•Students will incorporate a correct citation style appropriate to the type of work and its audience in at least one assignment.
•Students will create a Works Cited that includes various sources (scholarly, non-scholarly, print, Web).
Visual rhetoric and design
12) Students will reinforce their understanding of visual rhetoric.
Assessment/Deliverable:
•Students will incorporate visuals responsibly into at least one major course project.
13) Students will reinforce their understanding of document design.
Assessment/Deliverable:
•Student assignments will be evaluated for design and presentation.
Reading
14) Students will reinforce their understanding that good reading is connected to good writing
and good thinking.
Assessment/Deliverables:
•Students will read challenging literary texts and support material about those texts.
•Students will read a substantial amount of their peers’ writing in the course, and will provide advice on improvement (i.e., peer review) to their peers.
•Students will demonstrate the ability to analyze selections from the course readings that exemplify various modes and styles of writing.
15) Students will continue to see texts as ongoing discussions that they are invited to join.
Assessment/Deliverable:
•Students will discuss and reflect on readings in assignments and discussions.
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