“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
― Socrates
Cover letter
December 10, 2012
Dear Dr. Caswell,
I have composed this portfolio to demonstrate my abilities as a writer and researcher. “A Do Over”, a literacy narrative, and a food review comprise my portfolio in attempt to display two well-developed pieces of writing and my growth and accomplishments as a writer. These two pieces of work best display my ability to apply detail in my writing and represent who I am as a student and writer. I strived to document my ability to draft and revise pieces of writing to portray sufficient amount of detail and to be attentive to an audience. While revising my pieces of writing for my portfolio, I was able to recognize my weaknesses as a writer and address the problems throughout the editing process. For the purpose of making my portfolio to be easily accessible, readable, and organized; I composed my portfolio digitally. Composing my portfolio digitally has allowed me to easily incorporate my pieces of writings and include media that represent me as a student and writer.
I chose to include my narrative, “A Do Over”, in my portfolio because before I edited it, I was best represented as a person and student by this piece of work. “A Do Over” is about how reading “Wuthering Heights” as an 8th grade student was a traumatic experience as a passionate reader. Entering my senior year of high school I was forced to read “Wuthering Heights” yet again, but my experience was different. Reading “Wuthering Heights” transformed me as a reader and made me an exceptionally better student. After reading this my willingness to read novels out of my comfort zone grew. I found a love for the Bronte sisters after my experiences. Before revising my paper it was not very strong, but with a lot of peer review combined with my personal connection with this topic, my narrative became one of my strongest pieces of writing. My peers and you both gave me a lot of great feedback to enhance the quality of this project. Originally I was simply telling the story and continuously said “I”. After multiple peer reviews I was able to show my experience reading “Wuthering Heights” to my audience instead of telling the story. Also, a lot of my sentences did not flow together properly and had too much detail in them, making it difficult for the reader to comprehend what I was trying to say. With the help of my peers I was able to add clarity to a good portion of my narrative. Although I had time to work on sentence clarity and structure, if I would have had more time I would have exchanged my simple verbs such as “is” and “are” for better verbs. I also would have reread portions of Wuthering Heights to be able to incorporate more quotes that have affected me. This would display the personal connection I have with the story.
My second piece of writing that composes my portfolio is my food review on a chain restaurant, Mellow Mushroom. This was my strongest piece of writing before peer reviews. I was extremely proud of this piece of writing when I wrote it. Mellow Mushroom has a particular atmosphere, so it was extremely simple to find a lot of details to write about. I originally incorporated a lot of detail about almost every aspect of the restaurant from the food and service to the ambiance of the restaurant. I was very confident in my food review and thought it was one of the most high quality papers I have written throughout my educational career. My peer reviews did not give me a lot of critiques on this paper, which made me that much more confident in my food review. After, the review I received from you, I was even happier with my project. You advised me to add a little bit more detail but work on not listing those details by changing up my sentence structure. Applying this feedback further enhanced the quality of my paper and it helped make my decision to put this project in my portfolio. The confidence I had in this piece of writing makes it very important to me. Always lacking confidence in my former pieces of writing, it was refreshing to be able to believe in myself as a writer. Originally my weakest aspect of my narrative was the lack of detail and inability to show my story. I incorporated a lot of detail in my first draft of my peer review, so this project displays improvements as a writer. One problem I ran into while revising my review was forgetting minor details that would have greatly improved my food review. If I had had more time to work on this project I would have revisited Mellow Mushroom to find more detail about the atmosphere to include in my review. I would have also revised my sentence structure a little more, I was not able to make as much changes in this project than I was able to make in my narrative.
I came into this English class as a less than average writer, I can see massive amounts of improvement from other pieces of writing that I have done in the past; even I can see immense amounts of weaknesses in my college admission essays looking back at them. While searching through my projects to choose my projects that would be apart of this portfolio I even noticed improvements from my first project to my last project. That is another reason I chose my first two projects, I was able to improve my earlier writings to be of the same quality of my last project. I have learned how to show a story rather than just tell it. I am able to remove “I did this” from my writing and replace that with detail so my audience is able to imagine my story rather than just read about it. I also have learned how to add variety to my sentence structures, especially the beginning parts of sentences. Enhancing sentence structure allows my paper to flow and prevents the paper from being boring. I am able to put these skills into action while I am writing my first drafts of papers, instead of after multiple peer reviews. The skills I have acquired in this class I will be able to carry through the rest of my career here at East Carolina University and beyond into whatever career I may choose. I will need these skills to maintain excellent grades in my course work, but more importantly I will use the skills I am acquiring through this portfolio to make a portfolio that I may be able to use in a job interview one day. This portfolio has been created in this manner in hopes that you will be able to see professionalism and some of my personality as well. I hope that you are able to notice my growth as a writer and how I have fulfilled the purpose of this course.
Sincerely,
Camryn Keeter
Dear Dr. Caswell,
I have composed this portfolio to demonstrate my abilities as a writer and researcher. “A Do Over”, a literacy narrative, and a food review comprise my portfolio in attempt to display two well-developed pieces of writing and my growth and accomplishments as a writer. These two pieces of work best display my ability to apply detail in my writing and represent who I am as a student and writer. I strived to document my ability to draft and revise pieces of writing to portray sufficient amount of detail and to be attentive to an audience. While revising my pieces of writing for my portfolio, I was able to recognize my weaknesses as a writer and address the problems throughout the editing process. For the purpose of making my portfolio to be easily accessible, readable, and organized; I composed my portfolio digitally. Composing my portfolio digitally has allowed me to easily incorporate my pieces of writings and include media that represent me as a student and writer.
I chose to include my narrative, “A Do Over”, in my portfolio because before I edited it, I was best represented as a person and student by this piece of work. “A Do Over” is about how reading “Wuthering Heights” as an 8th grade student was a traumatic experience as a passionate reader. Entering my senior year of high school I was forced to read “Wuthering Heights” yet again, but my experience was different. Reading “Wuthering Heights” transformed me as a reader and made me an exceptionally better student. After reading this my willingness to read novels out of my comfort zone grew. I found a love for the Bronte sisters after my experiences. Before revising my paper it was not very strong, but with a lot of peer review combined with my personal connection with this topic, my narrative became one of my strongest pieces of writing. My peers and you both gave me a lot of great feedback to enhance the quality of this project. Originally I was simply telling the story and continuously said “I”. After multiple peer reviews I was able to show my experience reading “Wuthering Heights” to my audience instead of telling the story. Also, a lot of my sentences did not flow together properly and had too much detail in them, making it difficult for the reader to comprehend what I was trying to say. With the help of my peers I was able to add clarity to a good portion of my narrative. Although I had time to work on sentence clarity and structure, if I would have had more time I would have exchanged my simple verbs such as “is” and “are” for better verbs. I also would have reread portions of Wuthering Heights to be able to incorporate more quotes that have affected me. This would display the personal connection I have with the story.
My second piece of writing that composes my portfolio is my food review on a chain restaurant, Mellow Mushroom. This was my strongest piece of writing before peer reviews. I was extremely proud of this piece of writing when I wrote it. Mellow Mushroom has a particular atmosphere, so it was extremely simple to find a lot of details to write about. I originally incorporated a lot of detail about almost every aspect of the restaurant from the food and service to the ambiance of the restaurant. I was very confident in my food review and thought it was one of the most high quality papers I have written throughout my educational career. My peer reviews did not give me a lot of critiques on this paper, which made me that much more confident in my food review. After, the review I received from you, I was even happier with my project. You advised me to add a little bit more detail but work on not listing those details by changing up my sentence structure. Applying this feedback further enhanced the quality of my paper and it helped make my decision to put this project in my portfolio. The confidence I had in this piece of writing makes it very important to me. Always lacking confidence in my former pieces of writing, it was refreshing to be able to believe in myself as a writer. Originally my weakest aspect of my narrative was the lack of detail and inability to show my story. I incorporated a lot of detail in my first draft of my peer review, so this project displays improvements as a writer. One problem I ran into while revising my review was forgetting minor details that would have greatly improved my food review. If I had had more time to work on this project I would have revisited Mellow Mushroom to find more detail about the atmosphere to include in my review. I would have also revised my sentence structure a little more, I was not able to make as much changes in this project than I was able to make in my narrative.
I came into this English class as a less than average writer, I can see massive amounts of improvement from other pieces of writing that I have done in the past; even I can see immense amounts of weaknesses in my college admission essays looking back at them. While searching through my projects to choose my projects that would be apart of this portfolio I even noticed improvements from my first project to my last project. That is another reason I chose my first two projects, I was able to improve my earlier writings to be of the same quality of my last project. I have learned how to show a story rather than just tell it. I am able to remove “I did this” from my writing and replace that with detail so my audience is able to imagine my story rather than just read about it. I also have learned how to add variety to my sentence structures, especially the beginning parts of sentences. Enhancing sentence structure allows my paper to flow and prevents the paper from being boring. I am able to put these skills into action while I am writing my first drafts of papers, instead of after multiple peer reviews. The skills I have acquired in this class I will be able to carry through the rest of my career here at East Carolina University and beyond into whatever career I may choose. I will need these skills to maintain excellent grades in my course work, but more importantly I will use the skills I am acquiring through this portfolio to make a portfolio that I may be able to use in a job interview one day. This portfolio has been created in this manner in hopes that you will be able to see professionalism and some of my personality as well. I hope that you are able to notice my growth as a writer and how I have fulfilled the purpose of this course.
Sincerely,
Camryn Keeter