Welcome to my English 250 e-portfolio! Throughout, you will encounter a variety of works centered on multimodal communication learning. Multimodal communication learning consists of WOVE where Written, Oral, Visual and Electronic communication is integrated into my creations. Above is a menu of the different elements of WOVE and within the elements you will find assignments that I chose to use as a demonstration of my progress this semester. You will also find reflections on class assignments and an About Me page.  Feel free to leave comments and enjoy!

Dear Professor Dixon,

English 250 at Iowa State University, ISU, has been an immense learning opportunity. Formerly, I took the English 150 class at a local community college, and the structure of the course was entirely different from the classes here at ISU. Before, I was not familiar with the WOVE modes, so I had to catch on to this new lingo and learn. I must note, that WOVE has had a positive impact on my assignments. Not only in this class, but in others too. Below, I am happy to share my assessment of growth as a communicator in the WOVE modes.

Before I began this course, I had developed a habit of procrastinating, and as you may have noticed, it is a hard habit to break, but there is something about it that I would almost describe as addicting. It is almost as if writing under pressure makes me work twice as hard and I feel that it forces the quality of my work to be right on the first attempt. Though I have a terrible habit of procrastinating, I have been taking initiatives to shy me away from this stressful practice. I now try to start works days in advance or at least review the material beforehand so I can think about what I plan on doing when the moment of writing comes.

I have a peculiar way of generating ideas when it comes to writing. I either make a web for my topic and attach supporting ideas, or I merely scribble and jot down parts of my thought process. Usually, this scribbling and jotting down consists of a combination of English and Spanish. Spanish is my first language and sometimes expressing my ideas in a different tongue helps to clarify the confusion that I may have while brainstorming in English. This sort of process also helps me when I am revising my paper. I try to imagine having to translate it and see how effective it would be converted and if it is not making sense, I know I can make alterations to strengthen my argument.

When it comes to WOVE, I believe that I possess particular strengths, but I acknowledge that I have my faults too. In writing, I feel that I am good at using appropriate style and delivery. If it is a research paper, I can use an academic tone and maintain it throughout the writing, but the substance of research papers is where I seem to run into a problem. I have improved in integrating information into documents, but there is still more room for improvement.

Orally, I have surprised myself. I have grown from being a shy, terrified presenter to someone who is confident when it comes to interviews or in-class presentations, but it is in class discussions where I have seen the most improvement. I tend to keep my thoughts to myself and speak last because I am not the best at formulating my thoughts into understandable words, but through the class I have been forced to improve. I now feel more confident about expressing my ideas and no longer fear to be wrong, because I realize that everybody around me is in the process of learning too.

Writing emails is another improvement that I have seen. Formerly, I used simple taglines like to whom it may concern, hello and hi. Now, I use different ones like greetings, good morning and others that I feel are more appropriate in this mostly academic and professional setting. When it came to writing emails to instructors, I feared because my grammar has always been iffy. Luckily, I started using Grammarly, and it has helped to improve my grammar throughout all of my writings.

English 250 has allowed me to learn and improve on many faults about myself including, grammatical errors, a fear of sharing thoughts, integrating information and revising. The class has also allowed me to consider aspects of writing that I would have never taken into consideration in the past. As a writer you don’t really think about your progress until you are asked to do so. This e-portfolio has been an eye-opening experience about myself and for that I thank you. I thank you for teaching a valuable class that has taught me skills that will benefit me throughout my entire career and I thank you for the precious time that you shared with us.

Best regards,

Yalitza