Johnson County Community College English 122: Composition II Portfolio
Assignment #1 Spring Semester 1999
Assignment: Submit a writing portfolio March 12, 1999. The portfolio is worth 250
points.
This first portfolio is worth 25% of your class grade, so take time to put it together
carefully. The portfolio should include the following items below – make sure that
you place them in the same order as well.
- The first item in your portfolio should be a memo from you to me that introduces the
essays included in the portfolio and reflects upon your writing thus far in the semester.
Consider the following two issues as you write your memo.
- Describe your essays. Open your memo up with an introductory paragraph that
describes the contents and purposes of the Comparing and Contrasting Essay and the
Descriptive Synthesis. Here are some questions to get you thinking: What is the purpose of
comparing and contrasting two essays? What is the purpose of synthesizing a number of
sources when writing about a topic? Why did you choose your specific topics? What
difficulties, if any, did you face as you set about to write your essay?
- Describe the revision process. Here you will want to discuss what changes you
made to your essay and why you made those changes. Consider the following questions: What
changes did you make on your revisions? What were some of the challenges you faced in
revising the assignments? How did you overcome these challenges? What did you learn from
revising the earlier essays? For example, how will you apply the craft of revision in the
future? Why do you think the revised essays are better than the originals?
Your memo should follow the correct style for a memo. You may use one of the templates
in Microsoft Word. If you are not using a template, then you should place the following
headings on the first page:
TO:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:
Your memo should be 1-2 typed pages in length (single-spaced, double-spaced between
paragraphs).
- At least four drafts of Essay 1.
- Draft 1: Peer Review Draft.
- Draft 2: The draft I read and commented upon – no
portfolio will be accepted without this draft.
- Draft 3: You have a couple options here. This could be a copy
of Draft 2 that you have marked up with a pen or pencil, or it could be a draft that you
printed from the computer with the changes highlighted. To use this last option, save
Draft 2 under a different file name, and then go under Tools in Microsoft Word, go to
Track Changes, and then check all the boxes under Highlight Changes. After you have made
all the changes to your draft, print it out with the
changes tracked. If you are happy with the changes, go back to Tools,
go to Track Changes, and then to Accept or Reject Changes. For more information, see the
instructions on the last page of this assignment.
- Draft 4: The final draft that incorporates all the changes you want to make. This draft
should be a clean copy that follows the correct formatting requirements. Make sure it
still follows the assignment. This is the draft I will grade.
- At least four drafts of Essay 2—see instructions above.
- Prewriting for Essay 1. For more information, check the bottom of the assignment sheet.
- A Summary List of the major points of each essay
- A Similarities and Differences List (see page 82 in Writing in the Disciplines)
- Outline
To receive full credit for these activities, they need to exemplify some effort on
your part. For example, an outline that looks like this:
I. Introduction
II. First topic of comparison
III. Second topic of comparison
IV. Conclusion
does not reveal much effort or thought.
- Prewriting for Essay 2. For more information, check the bottom of the assignment sheet.
- What are the major points each essay raises?
- What will your organizing strategy be?
- Outline
Point distribution:
- Essay 1 = 100 points
- Essay 2 = 100 points
- Memo = 25 points
- Prewriting = 15 points
- Complete Portfolio (all drafts, prewriting, memo, everything in the proper order, etc.)
= 10 points
As you should know by now, revising is not the same as editing. Simply correcting the
punctuation, grammar and spelling errors from a previous assignment will not fulfill the
revision requirement. I’m looking for a re-writing of an earlier assignment, which
means cutting, adding and re-organizing. To quote from Toby Fulwiler’s book The
Working Writer, "Revising is, literally, reseeing your focus, thesis, argument,
evidence, arrangement, and conclusion and making major changes that affect the content,
direction, and meaning of your paper" (309-310).
Below I’ve taken some ideas from Donald Murray’s book The Craft of
Revision and mixed them with a few of my own to give you some things to think about as
you revise your essays over the course of the semester (and beyond). Not everything from
the list below will apply to every paper all the time. These are just general guidelines.
- Revise for meaning.
- Do I try to cover too much on the first draft? How can I narrow the focus so I can go
into even more detail in the body of my paper?
- What deserves more explanation and/or detail?
- What was unclear or cloudy on the first draft?
- Does my first draft convey a clear message?
- Does my title do a good enough job of indicating the focus of my essay?
- If I used supporting material, does it really add meaning to my essay or does it just
fill up space?
- Does any information exist in my first draft that is unrelated or confusing? Can it be
removed?
- Revise for readers.
- Do I use strong action verbs and good descriptive words to keep a reader interested in
what I have to say?
- Do I clearly explain everything so that my reader is not confused?
- Are my punctuation, grammar, and spelling correct so that nothing distracts my reader
away from my content?
- Do my opening paragraphs do a good job of enticing the reader and making him or her
understand why the topic is important?
- Have I followed through on my thesis? Do I fulfill the promise of my thesis?
- Am I consistent throughout? With my voice? With my verb tense? With my position of the
essay, i.e. I do not contradict myself?
- Is my voice strong? Do I sound confident about my topic? Have I avoided passive voice
sentence structures?
- Is reading my essay an enjoyable and enlightening experience?
- Does my writing suggest that I have taken my essay seriously so that my reader takes my
essay seriously?
- Revise for organization.
- Does the original draft follow an organizational strategy? Is that strategy the best?
- Are the paragraphs organized around a central topic?
- Does the draft contain transitional words that move the reader along and signal an
organizational strategy?
Instructions for tracking changes using Microsoft Word
Step One: After opening your
document, save it under a different file name. For example, save Essay 2 as
essay2changes.doc.
Step Two: Click under Tools at the top of
your screen and go to Track Changes.
Step Three: Click the box that says Track
changes while editing. Click OK when all the boxes have been checked.
Step Four: Begin making changes to your
draft by deleting and inserting passages. If you’ve done Steps Two and Three
correctly, your changes should be highlighted on your computer screen.
Step Five: After you have revised your
draft completely, print out a copy with the changes highlighted. If you have a color
printer, the revisions will be in color. If you do not have a color printer, the changes
will still be evident because deleted passages will be crossed out, and additions will be
underlined. This draft is considered Essay 3 in the portfolio.
Step Six: If you are happy with your
changes, go back to the Tools menu, click Track Changes and go to Accept or Reject
Changes. After going to Accept or Reject Changes, you have a choice of either accepting
each change individually or accepting all changes at once.
Step Seven: Once you have accepted all
the changes you want, save the draft and print out a clean copy. This draft is
considered Essay 4 in the portfolio.
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