Writing Assignment: Portfolio, Due 28 July.

Frequently asked questions about the final portfolio?

How much of my final grade for the course will it count? 60%. The other 40% is determined by your class participation.

When is the portfolio due? 28 July.

What goes into the portfolio? 1) a 7-10 page cover letter; and, 2) a 10-20 page collection of work.

Can I turn it in after 28 July? Only if there is substantial evidence of hardship. A crashed printer, failure to backup, or catching a cold doesn't count. I expect you to plan for such events and to have started early.

How to turn the portfolio in? You can turn your portfolio in either as a long google doc, which you share with me, or in a manilla folder, which you turn into me by 5:00 PM at my office, 322 Georgiadis Hall, Parham Road Campus. If you go the google documents route, name your document: "Your Last Name, ENG 111, Summer 2008, Section # X." You fill in your name and section number. At a later date, I'll let you know which hours I will be in the office on 28 July.

Can I turn my portfolio in early? Of course. Make arrangments with me. Having said this, remember, your class participation grade will continue to play a factor in your overall grade. Finish early and bail on your group, and you will take a hit on your final grade. Part of your job is to make sure everyone in your group succeeds.

How can I receive my portfolio back? If you turn in a physical copy, include a self-addressed large envelop, and I will mail your portfolio back to you.

How will I know my grade on the portfolio? Send me an email with the following subject: "YourName: My Grade for ENG 111 Summer 2008." In this email, give me permission to state your grade for the portfolio and/or course in my reply. If you turn in your portfolio as a google document, you can give me explicit instructions to post your grade within the document. Remember to set your share list accordingly. In either case, please remember how harried I will be. Because I want to give you as much time as I can to help you succeed, I'm giving you up until the last day of class to turn in your portfolio; this means, I am only giving myself a day or so to read them, review them in the context your work over the semester, and turn in your grade. I won't have much time to chat in any email I send.

How many pages long should a portfolio be? No longer than 30; no shorter than 20. Don't panic. You've written more than enough to meet these demands. In fact, you will be surprised how much you have to week out to meet them. Now, give yourself a pat on the back, and the next time you are asked to write a lot, remember how much you can write...if you use the right process and if you spread the work out.

How long is a page? A page is double spaced. It is written using twelve point typeface. The spacing between paragraphs is the same as that between lines within a paragraph, that is, double spaced. Each page has one inch margins side, top, and bottom.

How should I format my cover letter? Start with the date, drop down a couple of lines and open with, "Dear Steve,...: End with something like, "Sincerely, ..." You've written a letter. This one is just typed, double spaced, and written to convience me to give you a specific grade. It's also longer than most letters you have written.

Why is the cover letter SO long? The cover letter serves the same learning function as does a final. That is, to allow the student to review all the material covered in the course, to provide the chance for the student to integrate the material covered, and, last and least, to allow the teacher to judge the students learning and performance in the coruse.

Then why not a final? It's a couse in writing and communication. You need the practice, and this is a *difficult* rhetorical situation you'll encounter later in life. Such self assessment happend every year in annual reviews. In this case, in the process of putting together the portfolio, process, I get you to review what you should have learned, get you to guage and assess your learning (hence, making sure you really learn instead of just memorize), and I get to give the knowledge and skill set one last chance to set.

What tone should I use in the cover letter? Use first person, that is, "I." You should have figured out by now, I am fairly informal, but I am your professor, and as an audience, I'm charged with making sure you have learned to write well. This means I'm looking at everything involved with your writing, including your grammar, usage, and puncuation. After all, you are supposed to have learned some tricks to help you in proofreading and revision in this course. It's only fair you should practice them.

What style should I use in the letter? The KISS/SVO<24. Make sure to do at least one revision making sure you are following this style.

What should I say in the cover letter? Your letter will consist of a series of claims backed up with support. You main claim or focus for the letter will be what grade you deserve in the course, but you will need to make a series of lessor or sub-claims (and back these up) for you to convience me your major claim is true. Prove your major and sub-slaims using evidence from the writing you have done this semester. To figure out what sub-claims you need to make, think of the major ideas, terms, and skills you have had an opportunity to learn this semester, and make claims about these. For instance, one of the major ideas you had a chance to learn involved rhetoric. You might make a sub-claim like the following:

"I understand rhetoric better than I did at the beginning of the semester, and I have learned how to use rhetorical analysis to gain a richer critical understanding of the communication which happens around me and to build on this understanding to become a better writer and communicator."

You the evidence you might use to prove this claim might be taken from the rhetorical analysis you have done. You might compare your early work this semester with your later work. You might discuss each of the primary ideas in a rhetorical analysis, to show me you understand them, and then quote from different rhetorical analysis you have done to show me how your understanding of the terms has grown. You might tell me a story about day to day communication this semester and how rhetorical analysis helped you understand and be a better communicator in a communication situation in which you found yourself.

Your cover letter will be made up of different claims you make concerning what you have learned and how you have performed in the class. Make sure you develop each of these claims with more than adequate support. Remember, one of the main things I am judging you on is on the quality of your claims and how well you develop the support for each claim you make.

What advice can you give me about what to say in the cover letter and how to approach writing it?

1. Make good, solid believable claims. Don't try to snowball me. If you screwed up in working with your group or in terms of getting the work done, don't gloss over this screw up. Instead, make it a part of what you discuss in your letter. Remember, I am not interested in excuses or reasons. I am interested in how you used a place where you messed up to learn and to get back on track. I am interested in how you recovered and what you learned in the process. You can turn having done poorly into an asset by discussing it in terms of what you have learned about Kaizen and process, how you corrected your mistakes, or--at the very least--how you might correct them in future.
   
2. Having taught freshman writing most of my adult life, I have very well defined BS meter. Don't make the BS meter go off.
   
3. Don't inflate how much you have learned or the grade you feel you deserve. You might be tempted to say, "I deserve an 'A,' when you feel you deserive a 'C.'" You'll get more credit if you make the claim for a "C." Remember, one thing I am judging is your ability to make effective claims you can backup. If you claim an "A," but can't back up your case, it will count against you. To work, claims must be honest and realistic.
4. In the same vein as 2, be creative in how you back up a claim. You've got all the work and thinking you have done this semester as potential evidence to back up your claims. While I expect the majority of your evidence and support to be grounded in the writing and work you have done for the course, don't forget that you've been learning to think about your writing as a process. This means notes you've taken, email clarifications, revisiions and proofreading you have done all are potential evidence to help you support your claims about process. You might also tell stories which illusatrate a point you want to make, or you might point to a piece another student has written. Your choices, while not endless, are very wideranging; so, my best advice is to spend at least as much time going through and figuring out how you will back up your claims as you do. To do this well, go back and review *all* the work you have done for the course and *all* the reading you have been asked to do. Take notes. Your grade depends on how well you do these pre-writing tasks.
   
5. Work with your group. A good pre-writing exercise for this assignment is to go through and review the reading and writing for this class and to take notes on claims you can make about your learning and how you can use writing from and to the class as evidence to back up your claim. Another effective pre-writing exercise is to then get together and share this information as a group. They *will* have had ideas about claims and how to support them which you haven't, and their idea might be the difference between a high and low grade. You might also think about getting your group to critique your claims and the development of them, and when you are finished with an initial draft helping you proofread.
6. If you try to draft this letter and turn in your initial draft in a single pass, you will--in all likelyhood--fail. You have two weeks to revise and perfect this cover letter. It counts a *lot* of your final grade. Take the time to do it right. Use process writing. Revise multiple times over the course of the next two weeks. Get an initial draft done early,in the next few days, so you can add ideas to it and let it develop into your best work. Rush this process, and chances are, you will be disappointed in the result.

What can go into the evidence section of the portfolio? Any of the work you have done this semester. I don't want you to include it all. Go through it looking for the work which will best help you make a case for the grade you think you desearve in the course. Think of the evidence section as eveidence you can point to in your cover letter to help prove your claims. It's one thing to say, "I've learne to work well with groups and to use others to improve my writing." This is a great claim, but think how this claim comes alive if you point me to a particular email exchange or place in a google document where you really and truely helped another person in your group or they helped you. A good evidence section is a collection of such places to point me. The writing and work you include should help you make the case for your claims *snd* show off your writing and communication and what you have learned.

Do surface level issues count in the evidence section? Yes, but not as much as they do in the cover letter or as much as the deep content. If you have to make a choice about what to proofread carefully, make the choice to proofread your cover letter. Know the best choice you can jmake is to pick good evidence and work which shows you off at your best or which helps you make the case for each claim.

Does this mean I should re-type and proofread everything I include in the evidence section? No. For instance, you might decide to back up a claim you make about having taken the time to read the material in the course carefully, actively, and thoroughly by including a photocopy of notes you took on a hard copy of the reading. Don't retype these notes just to show me you can type and proofread. It would be silly. The same applies in other instances. Use your best judgment. It you include an analysis you have written or other type written work, then, yes, revise and proofread. Your measure here is: "Will retyping or proofreading make my audience more likely to respond to my message in the way I hope?" AND "Is this better response worth the time and effort to retype or proofread?" Learning to balance such questions is what the course has been about.

What do I do if I don't see an answer to a question I have about the portfolio? As always, write with questions.