English 150
Assignment #6: Final Portfolio
Fall 2010
Proposal due__________
period
Parts 1, 2 3 due_________
Closing reflection written during final exam
Audience
Your immediate audience for your portfolio is your instructor. More importantly, however, analyzing the
different parts of your portfolio is really for you—to reflect on your communication growth over the last
few months more completely than you have in the small reflections you’ve done along the way. As you
finish English 150 and do this more in-depth self-assessment, you will 1) compose an overall reflection
for your portfolio that introduces its contents and 2) explain in individual section reflections how the
artifacts you’re including show your communication abilities.
Portfolio contents
Please submit the following either in two, 2-pocket folders or in electronic folders on a flash drive (do not
email me your portfolio). Note: On pages 3 and 4 of this assignment sheet, you’ll find a proposal for the
parts of your portfolio that will allow you to plan your artifacts and ideas for reflection and to share those
ideas with your instructor in a proposal conference to get feedback on your thinking:
1. Table of contents and introductory reflection (Pocket 1)
The purpose of this opening reflection is to think back over the semester and re-examine with new
eyes the communication work you’ve done in English 150 in order to assess your growth as a
communicator using the WOVE modes. Write your overall reflection in the form of either an essay
or a letter (addressed to your instructor), using the following questions as a guide to help you
generate ideas. (You don’t have to address all the questions and may add information not included in
the questions.)
Note: Whether you decide to structure your reflection as a letter or an essay, it should include an
introduction, conclusion, and examples from your work.
Communication habits/processes
 How have your composing processes become more sophisticated since you began the course?
 How do you go about generating initial ideas for pieces you’re composing, as well as the details
and explanation needed to develop and support those ideas?
 How do you draft and revise your compositions?
 How do you use others (peers, instructor, friends, family, etc.) to assist you in making effective
revisions?
 How have you improved your editing process? What are your typical problems with
mechanics and what kind of progress have you made with these?
 Which of your composing habits have remained the same during this semester and why?
Which have changed and why?
Communication development
 What talents or strengths do you possess in the following areas?
o W—writing (context, substance, organization, style, delivery)
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o O—oral (interviews, large group discussions, small group discussions, presentations,
etc.)
o V—visual (Place or Artifact analysis, brochure, etc.)
o E—electronic (word processing, e-mail content, ethical use of the Internet and electronic
images, etc.)
What new discoveries have you made in these areas?
In which area(s) do you wish you’d been able to do more?
2. Revision of writing with reflection (Pocket 2)
For this part of the portfolio, you will revise one of your earlier assignments (1-5). As you think
about which piece to revise, choose one that 1) allows you to focus on writing and 2) you can
easily see ways of improving.
Important: Revision here means more than editing; it means, “re-seeing” the subject. You
should include additional material, delete parts that don’t work, reorganize the piece, refine your
opening and closing, improve your title, etc.—in other words, you need to do a significant
amount of rewriting.
Planning and Drafting
As you begin, look over earlier drafts of your chosen piece (and any accompanying process
materials) as well as feedback you received (both from peers and instructor), asking yourself the
following questions:
 Which areas need the most improvement?
 Where have I changed my mind about anything I wrote earlier, and how can I incorporate that
changed thinking?
 Where can I offer additional development or clarification?
 What doesn’t seem to belong?
 Can I see a better way to arrange the ideas in my new version?
 What other issues do I need to address to make this piece more effective?
Refer to Chapter 4, The Brief Penguin Handbook (PBH) for advice on revision, focus, and
development. The piece you submit here should clearly be more successful in achieving its
purpose and reaching its intended audience than the earlier version.
With your new-and-improved draft, include 1) the original graded copy of the piece with my
comments, 2) any new process materials you generate during revision, and 3) a thorough,
thoughtful reflection that gives information about the following aspects of your revision:
 Describe additions made to the piece (written, text, visuals, source material, etc.). Highlight a
couple examples of these additions and explain their benefit.
 Describe portions you chose to delete. Explain the benefit of those deletions.
 Explain what parts you decided required no changes. Give a couple of examples of these and
offer support for your decision.
 If you reorganized or reformatted elements, explain how doing so benefits the piece.
3. OVE piece(s) with reflection (Pocket 3)
Include in this section of your portfolio, one or more examples of your work that highlight your
best efforts in oral (e.g. small-group work, interviewing, individual presentations, group
presentations), visual (e.g. brochure or other piece with image included), and electronic (e.g. email correspondence, brochure, or other piece that relies heavily on the electronic)
communication.
In your reflection for this section, discuss
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why you chose this/these piece(s) as evidence of your best work in the oral, visual, and
electronic modes
what, if any, changes you made to the original versions, why, and to what benefit
what you believe the piece/s demonstrate about you as an oral, visual, and electronic
communicator
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Portfolio proposal
Purpose of chart and planning questions
 To sketch out the contents of your final portfolio, plan what you will be doing with each of your
presentation pieces, and begin to consider what you can meaningfully say about them
 To discuss your proposal with your instructor and get feedback on your plans
Planning the contents
In the space below, jot down your thinking about the pieces you’re planning to present for grading in
your portfolio
Piece(s) to
Why I’m choosing
demonstrate work this piece/these
in this mode
pieces
Mode
W
One piece selected
from Assignments
1-5:
What specific big and
small changes I intend to
make to improve its/their
effectiveness
** One or more
pieces:
O
** One or more
pieces:
V
* *One or more
pieces
E
* * For the OVE section of your portfolio, you may submit one piece that integrates the 3 modes, instead of
a separate piece for each.
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Thinking of what to say about the contents
Now that you’ve tentatively chosen some pieces to present in your portfolio, in the space below, sketch
out ideas you have at this point for reflecting on these pieces (e.g. what your chosen pieces show about
context, substance, organization, style, and/or delivery; what their strengths are, their weaknesses; what
strategies they try to use; etc.)
Ideas you have for reflecting on your revised written piece
Ideas you have for reflecting on piece(s) contained in your OVE section
Posing questions about your plan/proposal
Note in this space, the questions you want to ask your instructor about your plans or any other aspect of
the portfolio during your proposal conference:
Evaluating your proposal
 Does it show careful thought?
 Is it complete?
 Is it specific?
 Does it give you meaningful ideas to discuss with your instructor?
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****Important note to instructor: Hold this part of the assignment sheet back when handing
out the previous 5 pages; give to students when they enter the final exam period******
Closing reflection: Looking ahead to future communication growth
(Written in class during the university-designated final exam time and placed in Pocket 4 or your
portfolio)
Purpose
While the kind of reflection you’ve been doing for the other parts of your portfolio has asked you to
look back on your work in 150, this final reflective piece asks you to project yourself into the future
as a way to establish new goals for yourself. It will serve as the closing of your portfolio.
For this closing—which should, like your introductory reflection, be written as either an essay or
letter (addressed to your instructor) and include an introduction, conclusion, and examples
from your work—you should do two things:
 Assess areas for continuing improvement in the WOVE (written, oral, visual, and electronic)
communication modes when you take English 250 and Advanced Communication courses
(English 302, 309, 314) and future academic classes and
 Lay out a tentative action plan, explaining how you will accomplish these communication
goals.
Use the following questions as a guide to help you generate ideas. (You don’t have to address all the
questions and may include additional information.)
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Which WOVE (written, oral, visual, and electronic communication) mode/s can you build on
as strengths? Why?
Which of the mode/s is/are your weakest area/s? Why?
Which of the rhetorical aspect/s (context, substance, organization, style, delivery) is/are
your weakest area/s? Why?
What concrete, realistic steps can you take to improve your weak areas?
Can you make changes in your communication processes in order to achieve better products?
If so, how?
Does your plan require the assistance of others? Can you ask for help from peers,
instructors, the Writing and Media Help Center, or others?
Portfolio Evaluation Criteria
 The portfolio includes all required components (see above).
 The reflective pieces (introductory letter/essay, individual section reflections, and closing
letter/essay) accomplish the following:
o Include specific references to prior work (examples) to support your discussion
o Demonstrate a thoughtful, honest, thorough and coherent analysis of your progress
 The written revision (Pocket 2) better satisfies the criteria of the original assignment:
o Substance: demonstrates a thorough rethinking of the subject
o Context: contains additional material appropriate for audience and purpose
o Organization: achieves improved focus, structure, and coherence
 Other OVE piece/s (Pocket 3) demonstrate/s competence in these modes
 Revision and reflection avoid errors distracting to the reader
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