final portfolio assignment sheet

1. ENGL 208 Personal & Exploratory Writing 1
FINAL PORTFOLIO
(150 points)
Description of Assignment.
Educator and philosopher John Dewey argued, “We don’t learn from experience – we
learn from reflecting on our experience.” In other words, only in the concerted effort to
recollect and make sense of what we’ve done is genuine knowledge created. To that end,
the last project we’ll be completing in English 208 this semester is a portfolio. The
portfolio will be a blending of reflection, a collection of evidence, and revision.
You will include the following things in your final portfolio:
1. A reflective letter. (Worth 75 points, evaluated on the thoughtfulness and completeness
of the reflection and the quality of the writing: see below for a more specific description of
what to include in the letter).
2. The final drafts of the major essays you wrote this semester: the imitative list essay,
epistolary essay, personal object essay, writing about a song essay, and the final script for
your audio essay. (These will serve as the evidence that you’ll draw on for your letter.)
3. A revised version of ONE of these essays, clearly marked “Revised” Note that this
should be a substantial rewrite – i.e. something major should change in the way the essay
is organized, in the content, or the focus. Papers that only show surface revisions will
receive poor grades. Use “The Craft of Revision” (from UNIT 5 Readings) as a guide for
how to revise. (Worth 75 points – I will be evaluating this on the extent of the revision).
Instructions for Reflective Letter:
Your letter should be around two single-spaced pages (approximately 1000 words), and
should do the following things:
• Describe how you did or didn’t meet each of the course learning outcomes (below,
in blue), using evidence from your homework assignments and essays you wrote
and my feedback on them:
ENGL 208 Course Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, you should...

2. ENGL 208 Personal & Exploratory Writing 2
1. Be familiar with many different types of personal writing.
2. Be able to read, comprehend, and analyze personal writing for its effects on an
audience.
3. Be able to tell a compelling story using personal experience.
4. Have a better awareness and control of formal features in writing, including literary
techniques, arrangement, style, and mechanics.
5. Have developed and refined your own writing process through the use of pre-writing,
drafting, revising, and other strategies.
• Using one or more of the “rewriter’s concerns” from pp 116-125 of “The Craft of
Revision” essay that we read for Unit 5, explain exactly what you did to revise the
essay you included in your portfolio and why you made those revisions.
• Explain what you want to continue improving or working on in your own writing –
what skills do you feel like you’re still lacking?
• Tell me your favorite assignment and your least favorite assignment in the class,
and if you wish we’d done more or less of something.
Learning Objectives. After completing your final portfolio, you should be able to:
• Be able to reflect broadly on your own writing’s strengths and weaknesses and identify
how thoroughly you achieved the goals of the course.
• Identify areas for improvement in your writing.
• Effectively employ strategies for revising your writing.