Madeline Fisher

Professor Harris
ENGL 1302-281
01 May 2023

Portfolio Reflection
ENGL 1302 was a smooth transition from ENGL 1301. The aspects of writing and the strategies

that improve writing were clearly explained in 1301 and helped me succeed in 1302. When

revising each essay after getting feedback on the final drafts of each, I decided that my essays

needed to have effective rhetorical strategies applied to them. In essay 1, my essay states that

daily stretching positively impacts daily life. Daily life such as mental health, physical health,

and development. I used real world examples and experiences to further the credibility of my

essay so that my audience could connect and see the views of others just like them. This

rhetorical choice is persuasive because it is easier for readers to be convinced of your claim if

they see that others are benefiting from daily stretching. Another choice that I made in essay 1

was providing the reader with information gathered by other educated authors to further back up

the impacts of all different types of stretching. For example, I provided evidence such as,

“Similar to the results of the short experiment, employees experiencing work related stress in an

experiment conducted by Shira Taylor Gura, a professional, came up with the same results. Gura

states in her article that employees “Experienced less tension and stress and had a greater overall

feeling of well-being than those who did not participate in the yoga classes.”” Just like me, Shira

Taylor Gura performed an experiment and doubly backs up the stress relief that stretching can

bring into a person's life. In essay 2, I compared research on how foster care impacts youth all

around. Rhetorically, I compared, contrasted, and used numerical data to back up and further

explain the topic that I chose, which was foster care and its impacts. Since I was including the
good, the bad, and neutral points of view to foster care, I had many peer-reviewed articles on all

the different views that included reliable research but not as many statistical data points because

foster care has to do with children's experiences as they go through their alternative home

journey. The use of ethos and logos were some rhetorical choices that I chose to implement

because they are persuasive tactics. For example, I used resources from the TAMIU library that

were peer-reviewed to ensure high quality information. In essay 3, I compiled my final thoughts

after reading and analyzing the different impacts that foster care can have and concluded that

foster care has an overall negative impact on children. In the aspect of rhetoric choice, I chose to

compile my thoughts and articles that had similar beliefs and claims as mine. I used a

compassionate tone in my writing to place a caring feeling for my readers, so they feel that this

issue is important, and the foster youth are heavily impacted.

I made many rhetorical choices in my essays, but I also used some when building my website.

My website has topic related images and gives easy access to all drafts, reflections, and

assignments that helped me in my writing process of all essays in ENGL 1302. The layout of my

website is super clear and provides my audience, in this case, my professor, easy access to all the

information that is needed to be evaluated for improvement. As well as my layout, the colors of

my website are eye-appealing and make it more interesting for anyone viewing my website. For

example, each page for each essay and assignments, has a different image at the top that is either

calm or somehow related to the English subject. Another thing is my choice in placing buttons

that are linked to my essays instead of having my essays copied and pasted on each essays page.

This decision made my website look cleaner and not just a long page of each draft, and the

reflection.
My rhetorical choices on my website are not the only aspects that make my website great. I have

inputted my essays but to get the well-done essays that I have now, I went through processes.

The writing process for each essay started off with assignments that led me to quality content in

the entirety of my essay and all of it following the specific prompt that was assigned. I greatly

benefitted from the annotated bibliography that was required before beginning essay 2. This

annotated bibliography allowed me to get all my resources together and have a place to easily see

what each of them were about, so I did not have to look through 10 sources to find the evidence

that I needed. With the annotated bibliography, I quickly could access the article that I wanted to

use to get information from. The other two handouts that I did for all three essays were the

library research handout, and the peer review feedback worksheet. These two assignments were

relatively simple, but they helped a lot before and during my essay. The library research handout

helped me gather the keywords that I would use to get the articles that had the proper

information that I needed in them. Without this handout, I would be sitting on the research page

for a while trying to figure out how to search for the topic that I chose. With the information that

the library research handout gave me, I knew that I could put keywords like “foster” or

“alternative” as a way of finding articles on foster care. I also learned that I could put “foster care

NOT adoption” to help eliminate the possibility of articles about child adoption. The peer-review

feedback sheet was also very impactful for the rhetorical choices that I made because it gave me

some place to put together the ideas that I thought would improve my papers that my peers had

after reviewing my essays. It gave me a place to check off parts of my essay that I needed to

completely change or adjust after getting helpful feedback from my classmates. As well as those

two worksheets, the subject to thesis assignment developed the rhetorical choices that I made. In

this assignment we were provided with some examples of thesis statements that were well
written and clear. After reading other thesis statements we had a chance to write thesis

statements on all the possible subjects that we planned to write about. Then, after having many

related topics with thesis statements, it was easier to choose the one that was best for the essay

that you wanted to write.

All of the assignments, activities, homework assignments, and essays were a way for me to learn

a lot about writing strategies and article analysis. Most of the information that I learned in this

ENGL 1302 course can be applied to other courses. For example, learning how to use keywords

to research certain topics can be useful anytime a class asks for sources. I learned a lot about how

to connect body paragraphs to the thesis in a particular format that makes it clear for the reader

that the information matches up with the claim that is being made. Essay writing is an important

skill to have for all classes because in any subject, there are opportunities and assignments when

you will be required to write about something. A big skill that I learned in ENGL 1302 was the

proper way to write an annotated bibliography. This will be important in my biology classes in

the future when I am required to write research papers based on research that I have done. An

annotated bibliography will be a place where all my sources can be compiled with a clear

explanation of what information they contain.

Many aspects of ENGL 1302 can be applied to other courses but there are a select few that will

not relate at all to the information that was given in 1302. A significant example of a class that

will not require any learning gained in ENGL 1302 would be pre-calculus and calculus. These

two courses do not require any type of library research, persuasion tactics, or writing skills. My

knowledge on how to build a well written essay will not be applied to my pre-calculus and

calculus classes because these classes only require skills on solving equations. For example,

when solving a math equation, I will not need to cite the sources that I found the equation from.
This also ties to MLA formatting because ENGL 1302 requires it of all essays, but this format

will not be encountered in math classes.

Throughout the course of the semester, my writing strengths have changed. Many of the

strengths I previously had have stayed strengths, but I have gained more strengths. In the

beginning, I was already good at making sure my essay was in MLA format, staying on topic,

and having a well written thesis statement. For example, my peers on the first essay could clearly

point out my thesis statement after reading my introduction. After the first two essays, I found

that the content that I had in my essay was getting better because I had my thoughts organized

better. I noticed this when reading my essay again and saw that my peers commented that I had

good information in my essay 3. On the other hand, my weaknesses started to improve after the

first essay when I focused and tried to fix the issues that I continued to have. My biggest

weakness is lack of flow in my essay. In many cases I have all the information but I do not have

the artistic flow that makes my essay more exciting to read.

I had a few weaknesses and strengths in the actual writing process and final products, and I also

had some challenges in creating the portfolio website. The least challenging part of the website

was creating a domain name and making my website simple to navigate. Making the domain

name was just a simple ten second task. Making the portfolio easy to navigate was easy because I

am good at structuring projects on Weebly. I just put all the essays on their separate page with an

introduction and assignments page. Another not so difficult aspect of the website was inputting

pictures on each page so that the website does not look so boring and bland. While I found ease

in some parts of the website portfolio, I found challenge in choosing the assignments that I

thought impacted my essays the most. I had a lot of assignments and peer feedback, but I had to

think long and hard about which three from each essay made the most impact on the final draft of
my essay. For instance, it took me around twenty minutes to think about which assignments

played a big role in making my essay solid and I finally thought about a few that were

significantly important. A few of the important ones included the annotated bibliography for

essay 2, the subject to thesis for essay 3, and the library handout for essay 1. The most

challenging part of the portfolio website was revising my essays because I did not have many

issues with my essays. After the three drafts of each essay, they were polished and edited to the

best of my ability so now it is extremely hard to find errors or areas that I can fix.

With all the different choices, strengths, and challenges that I went through in ENGL 1302, my

identity as a writer was bound to change and improve. With the experience of different prompts

for essays that I had never experienced before, I got never ending skills of adapting and making

essays follow the prompt as best as possible. A unique characteristic that can be connected to my

identity as a writer is the way that I always make a connection to someone in real life that has

experienced my claim. For example, in my foster care paper, I added feedback from a child's

experience while living in foster care. This aspect is also shown in my essay 1 when I have an

experiment and receive feedback from others who were positively affected by daily stretching.

In conclusion, I used many different skills and applied my learning to make rhetorical choices in

each essay and the website. I faced some challenges and showed off some strengths throughout

my ENGL 1302 experience. Overall, I improved my identity as a writer and learned many skills

that can be applied to further ENGL courses and other courses.