Welcome! My name is Josh and this is my ISUComm ePortfolio. This electronic portfolio is a collection of the work I have done over the Fall 2019 semester for English 250H. Within this site, you can find the following:
- More information about me
- A revised essay from the documented essay assignment
- A reflection for the revised essay
- My choice for my best work in Oral/Visual/Electronic communication
- A reflection for the -OVE work
- A reflection pertaining to creating this site
- A blog of reflections from the major assignments during the semester
- A final reflection
You can find each of the above by navigating through the task bar above or by clicking the links at the bottom of this page. Those items that are indented are nested within the previous page.
Introductory Reflection
Throughout this semester, I have gotten the opportunity to explore the written, oral, visual, and electronic forms of communication and documentation. I have been able to participate in discussions about today’s societal issues, write essays about money and success and how they affect people, and even give presentations about ironic proposals. In each assignment, I have had to use the writing process, draft, revise, and improve my work. Outside of the written assignments, I have learned an incredible amount about the importance of oral communication between people in both a discussion setting and a team setting.
During the course, I haven’t changed my methods for writing because I have succeeded well with my current strategies. Generally, I started each essay by simply writing what I wanted to say on the page. Often times, I would explain the topic to myself out loud as if I were telling someone else about it. This meant that my initial drafts sounded like a thorough explanation. From this, I would work in quotes and data from the sources I was working with so my information was supported. This gave me a good starting point for my paper, but I always asked for help revising.
When I begin to revise my draft of my essay, I start by simply reading over the essay out loud. Often times, this allows me to hear awkward wordings or information I forgot to include. Once my personal revision is done, I often have peers look over my essay to get their inputs. Having my peers look over my essays gave me the opportunity to make sure my thought process in the essay was coherent and understandable. After I made edits after having my peers look at my essay, I visited the writing center. With the help of the writing center tutors, I was able to fine tune and polish my essays. From there, I made sure the essay still said what I had intended and turned in the essay.
During the numerous editing processes I went through this semester, I have learned I need to focus more on writing concisely and specifically. There were many times I would write my draft well, but my thesis was not specific enough. For instance, in my literacy narrative paper, my thesis was “[R]eading with my parents and my own impact on others through writing have shaped my view on communication.” While this was a good thesis, it was not specific enough to be the only thesis for that paper. If I were to rewrite this thesis, I would have written “Being exposed to literature through reading with my parents as well as my own personal writing have shown me the positive impact sharing ideas and stories can have on people.” In addition, I also found many instances in my writing where I had redundancies in my work. I would say the same thing in two different ways or I would add extra, unneeded adjectives or adverbs. An example from my writing was from the rhetorical analysis paper where I had initially written “factual statistics” which is redundant since a statistic is assumed to be factual. Through revising I caught this redundancy and many others, but in the future I need to be more careful about the conciseness of my writing. My goal is to be more observant as I am revising my essay the first time rather than having to be reminded by my peers or professors.
While I have not changed much in terms of my writing process, I have learned a lot in terms of communication. Specifically, I have learned a lot about the importance of oral communication. The in-class discussions we had each Friday during the course opened my eyes to the different viewpoints people have on important issues affecting society. In addition to the discussions we had as a class, I learned a lot about working in a team from the Ironic Presentation we had to give. I particularly learned a great deal about the importance of communication between team members during the process. Since we had trusted each group member would complete their work well, we ran into a problem where one member did not do their work in a timely manner. In the future, I will make sure to keep up with how each group member is doing so all work gets completed well and on time.
English 250H has given me more experience in both writing and oral communication. I entered the class with good experience with all of the WOVE communication, but I have learned about the tendencies I have when writing, and I can now be more effective and efficient when writing in the future. The discussions and presentations for this class have also improved my understanding of how to communicate with others respectfully. The in-class discussions gave me insight into the lives and experiences of others, and the presentations gave me a chance to practice speaking in front of others. The most challenging thing I had to face with this course was being concise with my work. Without English 250H, I would not have gotten these opportunities to improve my communication skills.