Before beginning this course, I had the impression that I knew how to write reasonably well, and that papers for college would be only slightly harder than high school English. However, over the past semester, I’ve come to terms with reality. Yes, I did know how to write, but I had plenty of room to improve and strengthen my paper-writing skills. To put it in the perspective of the English 250H course outcomes, significant improvements needed to take place to grow my expertise as a writer. Specifically, I learned better ways to revise my own writing, integrated documents from a wide range of sources other than Wikipedia, and fine-tuned my writing for specific audiences. With this new knowledge in hand, I can use it to serve me well in both future courses and in my career. In this ePortfolio, you can find my reflections, my W.O.V.E. information, about me, and where I write my final essay. All links are located above.

Revision Rackets

One of the best things I learned this semester was how to use your peers. Primarily, they were used for drafting, feedback, revision, and reflection to both lengthen and strengthen my W.O.V.E. communication. Generally, I write my papers in one big spurt of energy and rarely look back to check on them. By using my classmates (and my teacher), they can look over my work and discover any mistakes that I made. Then, by listening to and using that feedback, I increased the proficiency of the revised piece. However, while this process may seem to follow one strict pattern, it usually is more of a circle or a figure eight than a straight path. You can return to previous steps multiple times, as most often, you need more than one person to peer review a paper to get the best results. I feel that by re-learning this process again in a college setting, I am more prepared for future writing assignments that my classes have in store for me.

Source Setup

Similarly, I improved my previous knowledge this semester on how to make and support claims with proper evidence. Each of the projects and essays this semester, even my oral presentations, required information from credible sources. To make my papers the most reliable that they can be, I practiced supporting critical points of my arguments with selected portions of other, authentic texts. This meant that I had to cross-check information with other sources, to make sure that they were right in the first place. It’s a tedious process, but it is one that needs to be done to ensure you have a quality paper. I also practiced a better way to integrate these quotations into my own writing using cleaner in-text-citations and using more of them in my overall essay. I already knew how to paraphrase and summarize extensive quotes, so any new information learned there was just superficial and unnecessary. All in all, I feel that my source game has improved tremendously, and I plan to continue this excellence streak in the future.

Audience Adaptation

A new skill that I learned this semester was how to write to a specific audience. This ability can be used anywhere, and Being able to target a particular audience is an essential strategy used by professional writers. I had never done this before in the past because I was only writing for my teachers, and had no need to target a particular person or group of people. This being said, I felt like my own personal YouTuber when I was making this ePortfolio, and it helped me get in the right mindset of audience appeal. I could pretend like I was someone writing to millions of people, and I adapted my papers as such. I could do this by answering specific questions in my essays that my audience might have while reading, so they too could understand the overall picture. Thanks to this, I feel prepared to use these newly developed talents in the real world. I can’t wait to try them out!

W·O·V·E Elucidation

While this semester progressed, I discovered some of my strengths and talents in the W.O.V.E. categories. My style and delivery in the writing department are above average. While they are often held back due to mistakes in substance or context, my skills in this department will only improve over time. Once these small mistakes are corrected, my writing talent will improve tremendously.

For the spoken, or oral, category, my strongest point has to be my peer review. I am skilled at fixing other writers’ mistakes while being slow to recognize my own. Being in a group setting has enabled me to be more aware of the corrections that I could make before the review session starts. Plus, I am skilled at working with small groups and one-on-one discussions. The only thing I really need to improve on would be my presentation talks, and that is something I can gradually improve on as I grow in experience

A new discovery that I made in the visual department was that I really enjoy making PowerPoints. There is so much creative license at my disposal here. I can make it whatever I desire. This is extremely helpful when designing a PowerPoint around a specific theme or idea, as the whole project will reflect the point you are trying to get across.

Finally, we have electronic communication. For this, we can look simply at the ePortfolio you are reading at this very moment. There’s not much to say here, as I have improved tremendously on web design since the start of the semester. After all, anything more than zero is an improvement. On a serious note, I discovered how hard it is actually to produce a functional, coherent website, and I am deeply impressed with those individuals who do it full time. I learned some new technical skills from this, combined with new ways of writing, and they all can benefit me in the future of my communication.

Each of the previous techniques I described above, I used in some way, shape, or form in each and every project I wrote this semester. As such, I had plenty of practice and improved upon them. For example, I rarely used in-text citations in my summary. It really wasn’t until my documented essay that I really understood the best ways to use signal phrases and quotations. I feel that this made my papers more exciting and insightful for my readers. Likewise, it took until I revised my rhetorical analysis that I fully understood the value of peer revision, and I tried to utilize it substantially from that point on.

Thanks to my new skills in audience targeting my communication for a specific audience, claim support, and peer feedback adaptation, my finished products have become much stronger as a result. As I continue to pursue my studies, this knowledge will prove useful in my future courses when writing papers and giving presentations. I could even use these skills outside the college environment, and I plan to do so in my everyday life. I am grateful for this opportunity, and I can’t wait to see where this new knowledge can take me!

I sincerely hope that the contents of this portfolio demonstrate how my communication skills have grown and strengthened in these specific areas. Please feel free to explore what else my ePortfolio has to offer. Thank you for taking the time to read this introduction, and have a great rest of your day!