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Erin Smith-Soeten

Professor Beadle

English 115

02 December 2019

Portfolio Reflection

Throughout this semester​ ​I have grown as a writer in many ways. Thanks to this class I

was able to hoan in on my ability to specify my​ ​thesis and tie it to the argument I was writing

about. From all three essays I​ ​learned something new every time. My essays have improved

immensely since the beginning​ ​of this semester just from having the amazing feedback from this

class in addition to the feedback I​ ​received from the LRC on campus. Rather than focusing on

the negatives of the essay​ ​the feedback was posed more as a question into how I can improve and

grow as a writer​.

The first essay that we wrote,​ ​Project Space, I specifically learned how to state my claim

while also providing contextual evidence to​ ​support my argument. In addition to expanding on

why my one of the articles evidence was superior to​ ​the other two. In this essay at first I

struggled with having a solid concrete thesis​.​ In​ ​my revision I was able to tie in my evidence to

better support my thesis. I am now able to distinctly​ ​back up each aspect of my thesis since this

essay I had to use evidence from all three essays to prove and disprove​ ​the use of ethos pathos

and logos of which article I thought was the strongest​ ​and why​.​ My ability to connect and tie in
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my thesis and argument to prove my point throughout the essay has improved rather than just

providing evidence and not backing it​ ​up with support and explanation.

The second essay we wrote was Project Text​ ​where we analyzed ​The Metamorphosis ​by

Franz Kafka. From this essay I learned how to better explain my rebuttal and refutation to better

support my argument in my thesis. I​ ​also learned how to provide evidence from a text to better

support my claim in different facets. In​ ​my first draft of this essay I was more repetitive of the

main ideas within my essay and didn't truly​ ​elaborate on the point I was trying to prove from

each piece of evidence. I edited this so that there is both examples from the novel in addition to

itside evidnecthat more specifically backs up the claim of each claim about the book​.​ This

elevated my essay with grater diction since I was less repetitive and had a greater range of

vocabulary when describing each piece of evidence and analyzing the novel​.

The third paper we did was project media where we analyzed a visual text of our

choosing​.​ I chose to visually analyze the branding of Moxi roller skates and how the choose to

promote themselves and why​.​ I choose a specific post from their instagram then analyzed the

symbolism behind it with its string representation of the company​.​ From this paper I took

everything I had learned this semester and used it to better my final writing​.​ I was able to

sharpen my ability to be concise in my​ ​paper and keeping a clear road map with my thesis

throughout my whole paper​.​ By this final paper I strengthened my cohesiveness through the

whole paper in answering the prompt clearly and with enough detail to back up my thesis.

In conclusion from this class I have learned how to have a stringer paper in total. In

addition to learning about the resources available on campus to get feedback and support when
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writing a paper. Overall I have improved greatly from this class as a writer. Im very thankful for

this class and the skills and knowledge I have gained from it​.