In this E-portfolio you will find some examples of what I have learned and created throughout the semester in English 150. There is an About Me page which will give you insight on my personal life, a Written Revision page where I show an old essay and a revised version of the same essay along with a reflection on that assignment, an OVE page which will show you a PowerPoint for my oral assignment and a poster I created for my Visual and Electronic assignment along with a reflection on Electronic communication, and finally I will have a page of my Closing Reflection for the whole class. You will find links at the bottom of this home page to each of the other pages, to the right of each page on my “Easy Menu”, and up in the right hand corner drop down menu under “Home”. Below you will find my general reflection for this semester.

Reflection

Dear Altay,
English 150 has been more busy work than improving my writing skills. It has however expanded my communication skills in regards to oral and visual communication. I would like to reflect on my communication habits, processes and development.

As far as my communication habits and processes go, I do not believe that my composing processes have changed in this class. I am a senior taking English 150 and have written many essays of all different lengths and even languages. I have written essays the same way for years. With little to no effort in most cases I received decent grades on each assignment and the majority of points I missed were technical errors, for example, not including a photo in an essay or small things that may be more opinionative than technical. As far as my writing alone has gone, in my opinion, I have done rather well since the beginning and don’t think I changed much at all. Creatively, I am more of an all or nothing writer. I sit down and just start typing if it’s personal and if it is a research paper I look up as much information as I can find first and then piece it together and jump right in and see where my writing takes me. This makes the audience target easy because I put in my mind set before I start writing who I’m talking to and the words flow out how they need to. For example, if I’m talking to a child or a professor the vocabulary that comes to mind is obviously extremely different. My rough draft of each essay is usually either an introduction with no content or basically my final essay without the final check through, it honestly depends on how much time is spent on it before our revision days. At the end I go back through and edit usually only small things and check to make sure everything flows well. Using peers to edit isn’t as beneficial as many think, unless they are better at grammar than you and actually want to take the time to read through your essay then it’s really not much help. When I revise other students essays, especially in this class, I felt like I tried a lot harder and made many edits to their essays but received mine back with only a couple commas added in. Either my essays are that good or my peer wasn’t trying that hard. Therefore, it’s really only beneficial if your peer wants to edit the essay and take the time and effort it requires to do it well. Often times, I re read through my essays and when I hit a questionable spot I will ask a friend about the specific wording or mechanics of the issue in question. I feel like I write well to begin with and when I have a question I seek out somebody that I know can and is willing to help me. My only goal to improve in my communication would be Oral communication because I have stage fright and is something I wish to work through.

The development process of my communication skills is more complicated and interesting to think about. Writing is without a doubt my strong point, especially if it’s personal. I prefer text and email over phone calls in real life. I am really good at finding context with topics I am interested in and most likely filler information in topics I’m not. Topics I’m not interested in just ultimately lack the enthusiasm and passion behind them rather than topics I like. Oral is my biggest weakness. I can talk in small groups and one on one just fine but standing up on front of large groups of people makes me uncomfortable. I dislike talking on the phone because it’s less personal along with presentations compared to small group discussions. Interviews ultimately depends on what they ask. If it’s a more personal interview where I actually get to talk about my interests and what I’m good at then it goes well. When it’s an interview and they ask you all of those generic interview questions like “what are your strengths and weaknesses” that’s when get all uncomfortable and don’t do as well. I would consider visual as my second strong point. I have a good eye for design and vivid imagination and am able to create appealing presentations with little to no effort and created a beautiful poster on the first try with only a few necessary edits. Electronic is the easiest of all. Everything is written electronically from emails to essays. I have zero artistic ability when it comes to drawing yet on an electronic platform when the shapes are already there and I just have to organize and pick the design and colors I am fantastic. I have discovered that I am good at making posters on an electronic platform and was made more aware of my electronic artistic abilities. My only challenge in my communication skills is oral communication and have yet to overcome this fear. I have discovered exactly what types of oral communication I am good and bad at and can now focus my skills on improving those areas which I’m not good with.
This class has strengthened my confidence in areas that I am good at, helped me find which areas need improvement, and helped me pin point my areas of concern regarding oral communication. All in all it has been a constructive semester and hope to use the information gained to further improve my communication skills.

Sincerely,
Haley Bailey

Links

About Me – https://eportfolios.isucomm.iastate.edu/haleyr/about-me/

Written Revision – https://eportfolios.isucomm.iastate.edu/haleyr/written-revision/

Oral, Visual, Electronic (OVE) – https://eportfolios.isucomm.iastate.edu/haleyr/oral-visual-electronic-ove/

Closing Reflection – https://eportfolios.isucomm.iastate.edu/haleyr/closing-reflection/