Hello, welcome to my ePortfolio for the English 250 course at ISU. Within this site, you’ll find pieces that I have worked on during the Fall 2019 semester for the course, along with reflections and personal essays that talk about each piece. You’ll be able to access everything from the menu at the top.
During my time in English 250, I have learned a lot about WOVE communication, which stands for written, oral, visual, and electronic. All of these forms of communication are important to master to be successful in the workplace, in school, and with general interactions with others.
For the written portion, we wrote different types of essays including a summary, rhetorical analysis, and a research paper. I think I do well with the written section because I am able to come up with a concrete structure for my essays which allows them to be professional, have everything flow together, and lets me cover all the points I need to hit. For the oral portion, we had discussions over the essays in one of our books which were on science and nature topics. When I am the one initiating the discussion, I think I am good at keeping the discussion going and making sure everyone feels heard. For visual, we did made PowerPoint slides that went along with our presentations. I believe that my strengths with visuals lies in making the slides look readable and interesting. Finally, for electronic our class made and used an ePortfolio to record our thoughts on our assignments and show what we learned about WOVE communication. Learning how to navigate and modify settings is important in using electronics, and I am good with those things.
When I came into this course, my way of starting a project or paper was a lot different than it was at the end of the course. Over the semester, I developed better ways to start, as starting was always the hardest part for me. Rather than try to tackle everything at once, I divided up the work over several days and gave myself more time to think and formulate my ideas. After that, I wrote everything down in an outline. The outline was the biggest help for me when starting anything, as all the ideas and the order they would be in was right there, and they just needed to be connected together.
To generate ideas, I like to ask questions about the topic that I am writing about. I can ask myself questions which leads me to search for answers which yield interesting points to discuss in a paper, as well as asking others what they think. I think know what others think about the topic not only helps one generate ideas, but it also helps one better understand their audience. For example, when I was doing my project about de-extinction, I knew a lot of people had heard about it through Jurassic Park, so I knew that my audience would better get and relate to the topic if I made references to the movie. Also, hearing their opinions about if de-extinction should be used helped me with researching the ethics of the practice.
After writing my paper or completing a project, I like to revise my paper by first having others look it over. Others will often catch mistakes that I will not notice, even after I look it over multiple times. Others are also best at letting me know what needs to be improved upon, possibly because some parts are confusing, unnecessary, or needs to be explained further. During this course my instructor had times were we would meet with her in order to have a discussion about our papers, which really helps with revising the paper and knowing if we’re on the right track. After making edits with their comments in mind, I will look it over again multiple times to make sure it is the best it can be.
Usually when I write, I have trouble with condensing information down. I end up writing too much and making things too wordy. Sometimes it can be hard for me to know what I need to include and what I can leave out. To help with this during this class, I liked to write my paper straight through, and then go back and take out things that aren’t needed. Then, other people will give me more feedback and let me know when something sounds too wordy or when something can be taken out. This class focused a lot on peer review, as we did it for every project and it helped me see the importance of it and how it’s good not just for grammar checks. It really helped improve my writing a lot.
The most challenging thing about this course for me would have probably been the group work. I think I am a very independent person, and I don’t usually like to work in groups for things like papers. Everyone has such a different writing style and way of approaching a paper that it can be hard to make things flow and have everyone contribute equally. My group had lots of trouble with writing a good paper with the visual analysis, and it was frustrating at times. When we did peer editing for that paper, listening to others’ papers made me realize ours was not going well and we ended up having to rewrite a lot of it. However, we eventually got everything done. Working in a group is something that most everyone will have to do in their careers, so it is good to learn how to do it in school and learn from mistakes during that time.
Overall, I have learned a lot in this course and I am glad I had the opportunity to do these assignments so I could expand my knowledge about communication. I also loved hearing everyone’s opinions and what they said during discussions and I’m happy we could have open conversations in the classroom about many different topics.