ASSEMBLING A WRITING PORTFOLIO
A writing portfolio, a collection of coursework in print or electronic form, is a unique opportunity for you to present your intellectual track record, showing where you’ve been and how you’ve developed as a college writer. Increasingly, colleges have been using portfolios as a way to assess individual students’ performance—and sometimes to see if the student body as a whole is meeting university standards. In addition, some employers request portfolios so that they can assess an applicant’s writing proficiency. Because portfolios are so widely used, knowing how to assemble a portfolio is an important skill.
The purpose of a writing portfolio is to demonstrate a writer’s improvement and achievements. Portfolios allow writers to collect a body of writing (and writing-related material) in one place and to organize and present it in an effective, attractive format. In writing courses, portfolios enable students to display their effort and progress through the stages of the writing process: planning, shaping, drafting, revising, and editing and proofreading. A writing portfolio contains work completed for several different assignments, giving the instructor a view of a student’s writing that focuses more on the complete body of work than on individual assignments. All the writing you do—from exploratory writing to preparing a final draft—documents your development as a writer in the context of your entire portfolio.
Students who assemble writing portfolios become active participants in their own education. Effective portfolios highlight what writers learn over time, making connections between multiple assignments and demonstrating knowledge and skills in different writing situations. While compiling individual items (sometimes called artifacts) to include in their portfolios, students reflect on their work and measure their progress; as they do so, they improve their ability to evaluate their own work. There are two kinds of portfolios: 1. Growth or process portfolios are designed to show a writer’s improvements over time. 2. Best-works or presentation portfolios are designed to highlight a writer’s notable achievements. If a portfolio is intended to show a writer’s progress, it will include material that demonstrates the writer’s ability to plan, shape, draft, and revise an essay. This material consists of multiple essay drafts with instructor comments (and sometimes peer reviewers’ comments as well) in addition to other work completed in and out of class for each assignment. If a portfolio is meant to demonstrate mastery of writing-related skills, it will contain only finished products, such as the final drafts of essays or reports. Whether its purpose is to show progress or to demonstrate mastery, your writing portfolio may contain material that spans an entire term—or even an entire academic career.
Writing Your Reflective Statement
An effective writing portfolio should demonstrate a writer’s focused, reflective evaluation of his or her work. For this reason, instructors usually require students to introduce their portfolios with a reflective statement—a memo, letter, or essay in which students honestly assess their writing improvement and achievements over a period of time. Reflective statements allow students to see themselves as writers and to discover both their strengths and the areas in which there is still room for improvement. In fact, the reflective statement is often the key component that distinguishes a true writing portfolio from a collection of assignments. A reflective statement may examine an entire writing portfolio, or it may focus on certain assignments or even on a single assignment. To direct readers to particular assignments, writers of electronic portfolios may supply links to individual artifacts and discuss how they demonstrate progress or mastery of the subject matter. Writers may also summarize, paraphrase, and quote from portfolio content to support claims made in their reflective statements. Keep in mind, however, that a reflective statement is not merely a summary of completed work; it is an opportunity to look closely and analytically at your writing and thus to gain insights about your development as a writer. For this reason, you should be candid and honest in your assessment both of your writing and of your progress.
Requirements for the Final Portfolio
- A reflective, self-assessment letter, written to your instructor using block-style Business Letter format. The letter should be 2-3 pages, minimum, single-spaced in block style.
In the letter, examine your progress both as a writer and with your engagement with the course theme, The American Dream. Discuss as well the changes you have made to the essay you have revised, and why you chose to revise that particular essay.
- A revised essay (Narrative, Explanatory, Argumentative). Choose ONE of your essays to revise. In your letter (see above) discuss the revisions you have made and why you chose to revise this particular essay. You do not need to include any previous drafts, just a final, revised draft.
Save these two items as ONE document. Submit the document to the Final Portfolio dropbox.
