Assignment #5: Portfolio
Due April 30th (In paper form)
Proposal Due In conference with me April 16th or 18th (Not turning it in but I want to see it)
Audience and purpose
Your immediate audience for your portfolio is your instructor. More importantly, however, analyzing the different parts of your portfolio is really for you—to reflect on your communication growth over the last few months more completely than you have in the small reflections you’ve done along the way. As you finish English 250 and do this more in-depth self-assessment, you will 1) compose an overall reflection for your portfolio that introduces its contents and 2) explain in individual section reflections how the artifacts you’re including show your communication abilities.
Your immediate audience for your portfolio is your instructor. More importantly, however, analyzing the different parts of your portfolio is really for you—to reflect on your communication growth over the last few months more completely than you have in the small reflections you’ve done along the way. As you finish English 250 and do this more in-depth self-assessment, you will 1) compose an overall reflection for your portfolio that introduces its contents and 2) explain in individual section reflections how the artifacts you’re including show your communication abilities.
The question we asked you to think about repeatedly in this course has been, “How does communication work in your field?” As you revise each of your pieces of writing ask yourself how you can make each piece more appropriate for your field. For your reflection, talk about why you made your major revision choices. Specifically, explain to me how you see your field differently than you did when you wrote the first draft of each piece. What changed your perspective?
Portfolio contents
Please submit the following in two, 2-pocket folders. You may also post them to your blog, especially if you have videos or color photos in your portfolio. They are due April 30th.
Notes:
· On pages 3 and 4 of this assignment sheet, you’ll find a proposal for the parts of your portfolio that will allow you to plan your artifacts and ideas for reflection and to share those ideas with your instructor in a proposal conference to get feedback on your thinking:
1. Table of contents and introductory reflection
The purpose of this opening reflection is to think back over the semester and re-examine with new eyes the communication work you’ve done in English 150 in order to assess your growth as a communicator using the WOVE modes. Write your overall reflection in the form of either a letter (addressed to your instructor), using the following questions as a guide to help you generate ideas. (You don’t have to address all the questions and may add information not included in the questions.)
Note: Your reflection as a letter should include an introduction, conclusion, and examples from your work.
Communication habits/processes
· How have your composing processes become more sophisticated since you began the course?
· How do you go about generating initial ideas for pieces you’re composing, as well as the details and explanation needed to develop and support those ideas?
· How do you accommodate different audiences when you communicate? How does audience consideration affect choice of communication mode(s)?
· How do you draft and revise your compositions?
· How do you use others (peers, instructor, friends, family, etc.) to assist you in making effective revisions?
· How have you improved your editing process? What are your typical problems with mechanics and what kind of progress have you made with these?
· Which of your composing habits have remained the same during this semester and why? Which have changed and why?
Communication development
· What talents or strengths do you possess in the following areas?
o W—writing (context, substance, organization, style, delivery)
o O—oral (interviews, large group discussions, small group discussions, presentations, etc.)
o V—visual (Place or Artifact analysis, brochure, etc.)
o E—electronic (word processing, e-mail content, ethical use of the Internet and electronic images, etc.)
· What new discoveries have you made in these areas?
· In which area(s) do you wish you’d been able to do more?
2. Revision of an assignment with reflection
For this part of the portfolio, you will revise one of your earlier assignments (1-4). As you think about which piece to revise, choose one that 1) allows you to focus on writing and 2) you can easily see ways of improving.
Important: Revision here means more than editing; it means, “re-seeing” the subject. You should include
additional material, delete parts that don’t work, reorganize the piece, refine your opening and closing, improve your title, etc.—in other words, you need to do a significant amount of rewriting. Importantly, envision and specify a likely audience for your piece and think about what you can do to facilitate their understanding of your communication.
Planning and Drafting
As you begin, look over earlier drafts of your chosen piece (and any accompanying process materials) as well as feedback you received (both from peers and instructor), asking yourself the following questions:
· Which areas need the most improvement?
· Where have I changed my mind about anything I wrote earlier, and how can I incorporate that changed thinking?
· Where can I offer additional development or clarification?
· What doesn’t seem to belong?
· Can I see a better way to arrange the ideas in my new version?
· What other issues do I need to address to make this piece more effective?
Refer to Chapters 10 and 11, The Everyday Writer (EW) for advice on revision, focus, and development.
The piece you submit here should clearly be more successful in achieving its purpose and reaching its intended audience than the earlier version.
With your new-and-improved draft include a thorough, thoughtful reflection that gives information about the following aspects of your revision:
· Describe additions made to the piece (written, text, visuals, source material, etc.). Highlight a couple examples of these additions and explain their benefit.
· Describe portions you chose to delete. Explain the benefit of those deletions.
· Explain what parts you decided required no changes. Give a couple of examples of these and offer support for your decision.
· If you reorganized or reformatted elements, explain how doing so benefits the piece.
3. -OVE piece(s) with reflection
Include in this section of your portfolio, one or more examples of your work that highlight your best efforts in oral (e.g. small-group work, interviewing, individual presentations, group presentations), visual (e.g. brochure or other piece with image included), and electronic (e.g. e-mail correspondence, brochure, or other piece that relies heavily on the electronic) communication.
In your reflection for this section, discuss the following:
· Why you chose this/these piece(s) as evidence of your best work in the oral, visual, and electronic modes
· What, if any, changes you made to the original versions, why, and to what benefit
· What you believe the piece/s demonstrate about you as an oral, visual, and electronic communicator
Portfolio Evaluation Criteria
· The portfolio includes all required components (see above).
· The reflective pieces (introductory letter/essay, individual section reflections, and closing letter/essay) accomplish the following:
o Include specific references to prior work (examples) to support your discussion
o Demonstrate a thoughtful, honest, thorough and coherent analysis of your progress
· The written revision (Pocket 2) better satisfies the criteria of the original assignment:
o Substance: demonstrates a thorough rethinking of the subject
o Context: contains additional material appropriate for audience and purpose
o Organization: achieves improved focus, structure, and coherence
· Other OVE piece/s (Pocket 3) demonstrate/s competence in these modes
· Revision and reflection avoid errors distracting to the reader
Portfolio proposal
Purpose of chart and planning questions
- To sketch out the contents of your final portfolio, plan what you will be doing with each of your presentation pieces, and begin to consider what you can meaningfully say about them
- To discuss your proposal with your instructor and get feedback on your plans
Planning the contents
In the space below, jot down your thinking about the pieces you’re planning to present for grading in your portfolio
In your portfolio you need to revise two of your pieces of work:
1. Represents your best written abilities
2. A piece that represents your best work in the oral/visual/electronic modes
Thinking of what to say about the contents
Now that you’ve tentatively chosen some pieces to present in your portfolio, in the space below, sketch out ideas you have at this point for reflecting on these pieces (e.g. what your chosen pieces show about context, substance, organization, style, and/or delivery; what their strengths are, their weaknesses; what strategies they try to use; etc.)
Ideas you have for reflecting on your revised written piece
Ideas you have for reflecting on piece(s) contained in your OVE section
Posing questions about your plan/proposal
Note in this space, the questions you want to ask your instructor about your plans or any other aspect of the portfolio during your proposal conference:
Evaluating your proposal
· Does it show careful thought?
· Is it complete?
· Is it specific?
· Does it give you meaningful ideas to discuss with your instructor?
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