Final Portfolio
CAS WR 098
Due by class time on April 29, uploaded to Blackboard as a single electronic document
(such as Word document or Digication link).
PURPOSE: This assignment asks you to present your best work and demonstrate your learning
in an organized portfolio. In a portfolio you
 organize and introduce your own work, making and defending claims about its value to
you as a student, researcher, and writer.
 describe and evaluate reading, research, and writing strategies or skills that you can
transfer to other courses.
 present polished essays.
 practice thinking rhetorically; that is, you develop effective writing habits, meet an
audience beyond me and your classmates, arrange your evidence, and make appeals
based on reason.
ASSIGNMENT:
Your Final Portfolio should exhibit 7-10 items. You must include the following 5 items:
 Table of Contents
 Introduction (at least 500 words; see specific prompts below)
 Scanned draft (with all of my feedback) of Analytical Summary
 Draft version of Paper 3 (make sure to save this as a separate document at some point
during your writing process)
 Final version of Paper 3
You might also include any of the following items:
 Supporting evidence of writing process (for example--drafts, outlines, reading notes,
other drafts with teacher or peer feedback, Mid-Semester Self-Reflection, comments you
wrote before submitting papers, etc.).
How to create a portfolio:
1. Collect
The first step to assembling a portfolio is to collect your work from the semester so far, including
notes (reading and in-class), outlines, working problem statements, reading, drafts, peer
responses, and final essays. Readings, handouts, and assignment sheets should also be gathered.
2. Select
Your portfolio will include finished essays as well as supporting material that demonstrates your
writing process (notes, drafts, peer responses, and working bibliographies, among others). These
are the “artifacts” of your portfolio, the exhibits that will occasion and substantiate your claims.
Select your artifacts carefully. You will want to limit yourself to presenting the amount of
evidence you think will best help your reader see your process without overwhelming her.
You will want to organize your portfolio in a way that helpfully evidences your introductory
essay. The structure of your portfolio, much like the structure of any argument, should support
the claims in your introduction. Perhaps you will organize your portfolio by your process (from
notes to outline to finished essay); perhaps by theme or research question; perhaps by course
goal; perhaps by some other framework, to be determined by you.
3. Reflect
In a coherent, cohesive essay, introduce your portfolio. Your essay will document and evaluate
your work in this course, present your portfolio publicly to your peers and to your teachers, and
guide your readers to the important artifacts.
Consider the course goals as well as your personal goals for your scholarly writing. In your
introduction to the essay, articulate a claim that assesses the progress you made in your scholarly
writing. The rest of your essay will elaborate and defend the claim through the presentation and
interpretation of artifacts. In other words, quote or paraphrase your own work to substantiate
your claims. There is no need to provide citations for your own work.
In your Introduction, you must include the following considerations:
 Detail the revisions you’ve made as you've worked on Paper 3 and the improvements and
changes that you want readers to notice. Explain and analyze some of the repeated errors
you’ve been working to avoid and the types of revisions that benefited you. You should
cite your peers’ and my responses to your work to support your self-assessment. Point to
specific advice or techniques that you learned from the course. (At least 300 words).
In your Introduction, you might do the following:
 Summarize or quote from your Mid-Semester Self-Reflection (up to 100 words).
 Explain how you have been working toward the course goals listed on the first page of
the syllabus.
 Acknowledge your weaknesses, but show how you’ve worked to overcome them.
 Reflect on what you’ve learned about formulating theses and organizing arguments.
 Demonstrate what this portfolio illustrates about you as a reader, writer, student,
researcher or critical thinker. How have your practices and habits of reading, writing,
and organizing changed or evolved?
 Explain how you have consciously imitated at least one author. You might detail specific
features of their writing that you admire. See class handouts and/or your handbook for
specific considerations such as diction, figures of speech, word choice, emotion, imagery,
parallelism, and so on. You could also give an example of at least one sentence from
your own writing that imitates a specific sentence from another author (quote the model
sentence).
Comments:
 Title your portfolio introduction.
 Each artifact should serve a purpose in the argument you’re making about the
portfolio, and should be mentioned in your Introduction.
 You may hand-number your portfolio if it is easier.