McElreath 1

Blane McElreath Suzanne Ingram English 1203-036 11-25-12 Throughout the semester I have been compiling all of my works into my English portfolio. In all I have over 40 pieces of work that are a representation of what I have achieved over the course. Sorting through each and every article of work I have completed, has made me proud of my accomplishments. I never excelled in any English class that I have taken. I was always a B- student in English, which aggravated me to a great extent knowing that this was my least favorite class. No matter how much work I put in I always ended up a bit short of that A, but in this class I came to the realization of something. All my life in English class I worried about my grade, getting that A+ and being done with my job. I just wanted to have something to hand in to see what I would get; I never considered being engaged in actually writing a great paper, something worth the read. This class taught me that, mainly because I never had a grade circled above my paper when it was handed back. I had writing up and down it with different suggestions, comments, and remarks on my work. I became aware that a grade is just a letter to put you through to your next semester, but the work is meant to be thoughtful and meaningful. Through these 40 pieces of work I have collected all semester I can prove to you that my work is thorough and genuine. I have arranged all the pieces of work into five separate sections that help easily demonstrate what I have accomplished, learned, and succeeded at in English 1103.

McElreath 2

The first section that I will go over is the process of revising, editing, and completing drafts based off of feedback from my peers and professor. To me, this is the most essential element of the course, and the one that I have learned most from this semester. I used my What Its Like to be You Essay to show the process I went through in understanding the importance of peer reviewing. With this paper being one of the first major papers in the course, peer reviewing was completely new to me. My first draft came out to be four pages in pen and paper, plenty of writing that needed much revising. In my first cover letter I wrote, For me to explain everything that has happened to shape who I am, it would be a book. I think because of the lack of information provided, the reader will not be able to make sense of how I am relating this to who I am and what I am made of. When my peer group first revised my paper you could tell this was evident because one of my group members commented on the paper I want to know if any other relationships developed him like friendships + girlfriends. The feedback from my group helped me greatly, with each member adding different suggestions to help structure my paper. Thanks to my groups participation we were able to add sections such as my two and a half year relationship in and take unnecessary information out. Then in the second draft of the WILTBY essay, I was able to get a better understanding of my paper and where it was at. In my second cover letter I wrote, From the feedback I received about my first draft, I made some much needed improvements to the essay. It was clear that I had made revisions, but based upon the feedback from you, I still needed more improvements. All through the paper there where spots of writing that became confusing, jumbled, and difficult to understand. This weakness has plagued me in my writing ever since I can remember. The feedback helped me identify the spots that confused the reader so that I could

McElreath 3

revise them to flow better. Normally I wouldnt be able to pick out these spots but thanks to the comment As a reader, I got lost in a few spots (see my marginal comments) how could you clean these spots up, I was able to identify the spots. When I went back and read through carefully at these indicated spots I realized how my writing could be misunderstood. There were eight sections in the paper in which this occurred and without peer editing I would have never caught them. After editing my paper to form my final draft I am extremely confident that the paper is quality material that I am proud to show off. Throughout the entire course in all of my papers, the importance of peer editing showed up time after time, helping me make my papers better. Receiving feedback has definitely improved me as a writer and I am certain that what feedback I have provided helped my peers become better writers as well. The next section I am going to discuss is what I have learned from the Writing inquiry book, in particular ethos, pathos, and logos. Not once before this course have I heard of ethos, pathos, or logos, but now I understand how vital these three elements are in producing next level work. The notes that I took from the Writing Inquiry book helped me immensely in writing my Argumentative Research Essay. In the paper, it is crystal clear that you can see my understanding of these three elements. In my notes taken from the book I explained the three stages in evoking ethos, establish that you have good judgment, convey to readers that you are knowledgeable, and show that you understand the complexity of the issue. I went through each stage and made sure that there were locations in my paper in which ethos was used. You can see each stage when you read all of the research compiled from my four sources. I show the reader that I have done my research, gathered the background information, and have a full understanding of my topic. Once I did that, I knew that the reader would see I knew the

McElreath 4

complexity of the issue and they would see my side of the argument. After I gained the confidence of the reader I began to interweave pathos into my paper through my experience with wrestling. My notes taken showed that I needed to know what my readers valued, use illustrations/examples that appealed to emotions, and considered how tone affects my audience. I could not have thought of a better example to use other than wrestling. My experiences with wrestling connected me with my audience, the athletic community, and illustrated my viewpoints with an emotional story. I used wrestling as a way to connect to my readers emotionally while proving my point in the argument and it can be seen here, I had to try to find a median between how much I should listen to the trainers wishes and how much effort I should put in according to my coach. I was the only one who was aware of the over training that I was going through and neither my coach nor the trainer helped me with the situation. I know thousands of wrestlers who were under the same exact circumstances as I was, and they to felt severe problems relating to their overtraining. Both pathos and ethos where used in my paper, which helped connect logos through emphasis on my character in the paper. During the writing process of this paper I learned the significance of the three elements and I will definitely use them for writing in the future. With the end of that section, comes the next one in which I have always had the most difficulty with in the past. This challenge was always the process of using sources and citing them in research papers. Ever since my junior year research paper I have hated everything about citing sources and gathering them, however, I always had to do this to prevent plagiarism. Making my annotated bibliography helped me a little in understanding how to go about using my sources efficiently. It helped me out a lot to summarize the authors viewpoints

McElreath 5

and state their validity. I now can cite a source a lot better than I could previously, thanks to the notes we took in class on the several different forms of citations. As stated in my cover letter, My biggest challenge was the MLA formatting though, I found so many different versions of how to put it in correct format that I didnt know which one was appropriate for the source I had. I overcame this issue though which was a huge success for me due to my intense hatred for citing sources. Now I know that I wont have to worry about plagiarizing in the future which is a good feeling. The last section I have on my growth and engagement in this course is the understanding of different peoples viewpoints and how they relate to academic conversations. I took this knowledge from the three sided essay. The main reason why I took so much away from this is because I had to develop the academic conversation due to the lack of articles on my subject. In my cover letter I explained the problem I was having with this, There was information on athletes and how over training affects them, but no info on coaches or trainers opinions to the situation. I know they have strong opinions but to find their opinions written was the challenge I faced. The feedback I received from you helped me out when you said inferring is OK. Why not do some primary research? So with this feedback I began to research on some of the ideas that the three groups had. With this information I developed the academic conversation myself and inferred scenarios that would take place between the groups in an effort to help the reader understand the conversation going on. By going through this process I learned a lot more about how to develop ideas from different viewpoints and research them. It has helped me greatly in the argumentative research paper and I am sure it will continue to help me in understanding opposing viewpoints.

McElreath 6

All 40 articles that I have brought together played a role in my improvements in this class. My final papers are all well thought out, fluent, descriptive, and in general great works. I know I have taken away more knowledge about writing from this course than all of my other English courses put together. I still dont completely enjoy the process of writing, but I have a great respect for it now that I understand the processes involved in becoming a fluent writer. After all the work I have done, the participation in every activity, and countless hours in the library interpreting my work in efforts to improve myself, I feel I earned an A. This course has not been easy, though it was fun in comparison to other English classes taken in the past.