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ENG 106 Spring 2023

Final Portfolio

  • Due: Wednesday, May 3
    • The absolute last day to turn in your final portfolio and your final self-assessment is May 10. After this date, I will not accept this assignment.
  • MLA style
  • Turn in via Blackboard

Schedule your final portfolio meeting with me using this link: https://calendly.com/lcthomas/final-portfolio-conference?month=2023-04

Your final portfolio in this class is a collection of 1-2 revised writing project essay(s) that you have written in this class over the course of the semester, along with a final self-assessment (~2.5-4.5 double-spaced pages). Completing your final portfolio gives you the opportunity to revisit your writing, to revise it, and to reflect on your writing process and on yourself as a writer. The essay(s) you submit as part of your final portfolio should represent your best work of the semester.

All final portfolios will include your revised essay(s) as well as a final self-assessment (~2.5-4.5 pages) in which you discuss the major revisions you made to each essay and why you made them. You are also required to meet with me one-on-one to discuss your plans to revise your essay(s) based on the feedback I and others in the class have given you.

Unless you have worked out alternate plans with me, the number of essays you revise for inclusion in your final portfolio will vary depending on the grade for which you have contracted:

  • A: 2 of 3 writing project essays included in final portfolio
  • B: 1 of 3 writing project essays included in final portfolio
  • C: 1 of 3 writing project essays included in final portfolio

Revising Your Writing Project Essays

The essay(s) you choose to include in your final portfolio should undergo substantial revision. What exactly this means will vary for each essay and each student, and we will discuss what constitutes “substantial revision” for your essays in our final portfolio meeting. But here are some general examples of revisions you might make:

  • You rewrite/re-conceptualize your argument, meaning you need to find different pieces of textual evidence and write up new analyses of this evidence;
  • You revise a portion of your argument, meaning you rewrite a section of your essay and/or add an additional example or two (and analysis of this example) and/or cut a portion of your essay that isn’t working;
  • You rework your essay’s organization, rearranging some of your paragraphs, clarifying your transitions into and out of each section of your argument, and/or cutting paragraphs or parts of paragraphs that aren’t serving your argument;
  • You rewrite your introductory and/or concluding paragraphs, clarifying your argument and providing a better sense of an ending to your essay;
  • You clarify and streamline your prose, taking care to eliminate typos and clean up citation errors, as well as to better integrate quotes from the text(s) you are writing about into your prose and to include more signposting for your reader;
  • You add a whole new section discussing a new idea and new pieces of textual evidence to your essay, writing this new section from scratch and increasing the total word count of your essay.

In order to make “substantial revisions” to your essays, you will likely complete some combination of 2 or more of the above options for each essay (there are also likely other options and other changes you could make to your essays not described above).

Meeting with Me

One of the requirements of the final portfolio is to meet with me one-on-one to develop a revision plan and/or talk about your progress in revising your essays. I will hold these 30-minute meetings beginning on Thursday, April 20 and running through Monday, May 1. Please click here to schedule your meeting with me using Calendly. If none of the available times listed on Calendly work for you, email me with the times and days that do, and we will work something out. These meetings will happen in my office (Ashe 307).

You should bring or be able to access copies of the essay(s) you want to revise for your final portfolio with my comments to this meeting. We will go over my feedback, talk about a revision plan and what constitutes “substantial revision” in your case, and you will have the opportunity to ask me questions and seek clarification on anything you don’t understand.

It is your responsibility to schedule and attend this meeting. If something comes up and you need to reschedule your meeting, please let me know and reschedule it using the Calendly link above (and I will let you know if something comes up for me and I need to reschedule). Meeting with me about your final portfolio is a requirement in order for your portfolio to be considered “satisfactory.”

Writing Your Final Self-Assessment

You will also write a self-assessment in which you discuss the major revisions you made to each essay included in your final portfolio, why you made these revisions, how this demonstrates your learning in this course, and an evaluation of your performance over the course of the semester. This self-assessment should be about 750ish-1500ish words (~2.5-4.5 pages double-spaced). If you include 1 essay in your final portfolio, this self-assessment will likely be on the shorter side; if you include 2, it will likely be on the longer side.

Your final self-assessment should include the following things:

  1. A discussion of the major or important revisions you completed for each essay included in your final portfolio and the reasons why you made these revisions. A general rule of thumb is to aim to identify and discuss 2-3 major or important revisions for each essay, but this number may vary. Be specific.
  2. A discussion of what you like most about your portfolio, providing one or two examples of your writing that you are proud of. You should also discuss at least one place where you took a risk with your writing and at least one example of something you would still like to improve.
  3. A synthesis of what you have learned in this class and what you now think is important to know about academic writing. You can consider your writing process itself as well as particular aspects of a successful piece of writing.
  4. A brief statement (no more than ~1 paragraph) detailing how you fulfilled the participation aspect of your grade contract. As a reminder, all grade contracts require that you “come to class having completed and prepared to discuss any assigned readings, films, or other media. Participate actively in class activities and discussions, making observations and asking questions that help the class think together.”
  5. The grade you believe you earned in this class (including +/-), based on how you fulfilled your contract (the assignments you completed and your participation in class) and on the quality of your final portfolio.

Final Portfolio Requirements

In order for your final portfolio to be considered “satisfactory”, you must do the following:

  1. Schedule and attend a 30-minute final portfolio meeting with me.
  2. Complete substantial revisions to each essay you include in your final portfolio.
  3. Make sure that each essay included in your final portfolio follows the requirements for that specific writing project.
  4. Communicate your ideas in a focused, clear, well-organized, and polished way. Give the essay(s) you include a meaningful and communicative title, and iron out and clean up all grammar and syntax errors and typos. Each essay in your final portfolio should include correctly formatted parenthetical citations and a correctly formatted Works Cited page.
  5. Complete a final self-assessment.

If you would like comments from me on your final portfolio, please indicate that somewhere in your final portfolio/self-assessment.