ENGL 111 – Fall 2018

Paper 5
ePortfolio: Writing to Revise

Due date: Tuesday, December 11 on Canvas by 11:59 p.m.

Drafts due for Online Peer-Review: n/a
Online Peer-Review due: n/a
Length: Reflection: 1,200-1,500 words
Percentage of final grade: 12%
Number of sources: n/a (Please note: If you choose to use different sources in your revisions, make sure
you document them correctly.)
Citation style: n/a
Document design: ePortfolio
Acceptable file types: URL
Corresponding chapter of Allyn & Bacon: Chapter 26
Corresponding readings: n/a

Assignment Description
Your ePortfolio is a place where you will collect and showcase all the work you’ve completed throughout
the semester. You must include the following 20 pieces in your ePortfolio:
 Each draft you submitted for online peer-review
 Each feedback letter you received for online peer-review
 Each essay you submitted for grading
 Each graded essay with my comments you received (the only exclusions are the mid-semester
assessment and library session reflections)
 A revised version of each paper in which you incorporate my comments

If you do not have one of these pieces (for example, if you didn’t participate in peer-review or did not
submit an assignment), you cannot submit a “make-up.” You will receive a small deduction for the
missing piece.

In addition, you are required to compose a Portfolio Letter. The Portfolio Letter should explain the works
that are included in your portfolio, what your purpose and audience was for each, should comment
thoroughly on how the pieces demonstrate your mastery of the course goals, and should be
approximately 1,200-1,500 words. Do not merely tell me what you changed in your revisions; if so, you
will not have success on this portion of the assignment. Further details about the portfolio letter are
below. We’ll look at samples of ePortfolios and portfolio letters as we work through this assignment.

We will create the ePortfolios in class, so be sure to attend on Tuesday, November 20.

The Portfolio Letter1

This letter is in many ways the most important element of your portfolio for it affords you the chance to
reflect on your writing from the semester and evaluate what you’ve gotten out of the course. You will
need to show that you can evaluate the strengths of your work and that you understand what you do
well, what you have learned and improved on over the semester, and what aspects of your writing will
continue to require your attention. This moment of reflection is where process and product come

1
Portfolio Letter description adapted from Dr. Paula Mathieu of Boston College
together. As one of your readers, I have not witnessed your writing process in its entirety—I haven’t
watched you write, seen your notes, heard you talk to friends about your projects, seen you struggle,
etc. This letter allows you to share with me your process as well as your view on how well you have met
the stated objectives of the course.

Your letter should be approximately 1,200-1,500 words. In it, you should discuss the work you’ve done
in relation to the goals of each essay. Consider and demonstrate these objectives by referring to specific
essays you’ve written how responding to the works of your peers helped you develop or think about
each of the specific objectives. Try to offer a sense of what you see as your greatest strengths as a
writer, what areas you want to develop, what has been most worthwhile in this course, and how you
want to work on your writing in the future.

Framework
In your letter, you must address the following issues and themes we have discussed throughout the
semester:

Process Questions

1. What specific writing strategies did I use to complete this work?

2. Which strategies were the most or least productive?
3. Did this writing project require new strategies, or did I rely on past strategies?
4. What was the biggest problem I faced in writing this piece, and how successfully did I solve that
problem?
5. What has been my major content-level revision so far?
6. What were my favorite sentence- or word-level revisions?
7. What did I learn about myself as a writer or about writing in general by writing this paper?

Subject-Related Questions

1. How did the subject of my writing cause me to “wallow in complexity”?

2. What tensions did I encounter between my ideas/experiences and those of others? Between the
competing ideas about the subject in my own mind?
3. Did I change my mind or come to see something differently as a result of writing this work?
4. What passages show my independent thinking about the subject? My unresolved problems or
mixed feelings about it?
5. What were the major content problems, and how successfully did I resolve them?
6. What did writing about this subject teach me?

Rhetoric-Related Questions

1. How did the audience I imagined influence me in writing this paper?

2. How did my awareness of genre influence my choices about subject matter and rhetorical
features?
3. What do I want readers to take away from reading my work?
4. What rhetorical strategies please me most (my use of evidence, my examples, my delayed
thesis, etc.)? What effect do I hope these strategies have on my audience?
5. How would I describe my voice in this work? Is this voice appropriate? Is it similar to my
everyday voice or to the voices I have used in other kinds of writing?
6. Did I take any risks in writing this?
 7. What do readers expect from this genre, and did I fulfill those expectations?

Self-Assessment Questions

1. What are the most significant strengths and weaknesses in this writing?
2. Will others also see these as important strengths or weaknesses? Why or why not?
3. What specific ideas and plans do I have for revision?

You might consider writing one paragraph for each of these topics in which you discuss all four papers
(Framework A). Alternatively, you could discuss each paper and how these topics relate to each paper
separately (Framework B).

Framework A
Introduction Introduce the most important techniques, ideas, and skills you learned this
semester.
Process  Examples from Paper 1
 Examples from Paper 2
 Examples from Paper 3
 Examples from Paper 4
Subject-Related  Examples from Paper 1
 Examples from Paper 2
 Examples from Paper 3
 Examples from Paper 4
Rhetoric-Related  Examples from Paper 1
 Examples from Paper 2
 Examples from Paper 3
 Examples from Paper 4
Self-Assessment  Examples from Paper 1
 Examples from Paper 2
 Examples from Paper 3
 Examples from Paper 4
Conclusion How you will apply the skills you learned in ENGL 111 to your future courses and
other writing endeavors.

Framework B
Introduction Introduce the most important techniques, ideas, and skills you learned this
semester.
Paper 1 How you used process, subject-related, rhetoric-related, and self-assessment in
this paper.
Paper 2 How you used process, subject-related, rhetoric-related, and self-assessment in
this paper.
Paper 3 How you used process, subject-related, rhetoric-related, and self-assessment in
this paper.
Paper 4 How you used process, subject-related, rhetoric-related, and self-assessment in
this paper.
 Conclusion How you will apply the skills you learned in ENGL 111 to your future courses and
other writing endeavors.

Grading
For this assignment, I will be double-checking that all twenty documents are included. I will also be
grading slightly on design and ease of use of your portfolio (we’ll be discussing this in-class). Please make
sure you revise your papers, as I will be looking at revisions, too. The Portfolio Letter is important and I
will be looking for a clearly articulated and well-thought out reflection about your work this semester. If
you merely tell me what you changed in each paper, you will not have success on this paper. Instead,
you should show how those changes align with (or differ from) the course and assignment goals.