Portfolio

Cover Letter:

Throughout English I this year, I have learned many things about myself as a writer, good and bad. I think that through this particular year, I have learned a lot more than just the average English student. This class was a very big eye-opener that helped me to realize who I am as a writer today, and also helped me to make goals for what kind of writer I would like to be in the future. My strengths and weaknesses have become much more revealing to me this year, because of the many different types of writings that we have worked with. I also have realized the many things that I enjoy writing or reading about.

I chose the other three writings within this portfolio because of my love for them, my interest about them, or even the information within them. I know that these other writing have all helped me to grow as a writer, because I have learned many new styles, angles to look at for the actual writing, and more. One of my essays from the beginning of the year, Keep Your Eyes Open, has been a beneficial to me as a writer through point of view, stance, and even theme. This Literacy Narrative describes our own experiences with reading and writing, and that moment when it changed your point of view on it. I decided to revise this paper because of the simplicity of it, but also to see how much I have grown and learned throughout this year. Looking back on the writing now, I realize many careless mistakes that I would have passed over just a few months ago. Some of the main things that I decided to revise within my Literacy Narrative was the word choice, and the organization (transitions). I hope to improve my paper immensely by the end of the year.

My other piece of writing that I decided to look over again was for my writing remix. We were informed to choose either a blog post or an essay that we would be able to completely change to audience and genre; changing the overall body to the paper, but keeping the information. The writing I chose was one of my free posts from my blog. It mentions that transitions from being a middle schooler to a high schooler, and how good/bad or different/the same they were. To “remix” this blog post, I decided to make a poem about it, since I find a lot of interest in poems. In one of the recent blogs that we had, we were instructed to construct a poem using at least 3 writing techniques that we had learned in class (assonance, alliteration, simile, personification, etc.). I didn’t realize how enjoyable it was to write a poem, because I expected it to be tremendously difficult. In class, after reading some of the poems and analyzing them, I never thought of how much thought went into making a poem, or how just one break from words can mean something so big. I hope to have as much pleasure making this poem as I have before.

As written previously, I have a very large interest for poems: how they are formed using feet and meters, symbolism, or even tone. Another aspect of writing I enjoy writing is the research paper. Although I didn’t do my best on my paper for that certain assignment, I still had a lot of delight researching my topic. It was mesmerizing to find out certain historical facts that have happened in some of the places that I live! I see how people could find it ironic that I loved this paper, since I might have not made the most fulfilling grade. This is where many of my weaknesses come into play. Many of my weaknesses revolve around not applying myself to the fullest and procrastination. I do have many more flaws when coming to writing, but these are most definitely the main causes of my flaws in writing. I always wait until the last minute, and I have heard multiple times that if I do not start to work harder to apply myself, English will only be harder on me. I hope to soon improve plenty enough for me to be out of my old English ways.

This year, I do not know where I would be without the much work put in. I have grown from my writings, and now looking back, I feel like I was looking at a third graders writing looking at first quarter papers. All of the things I have learned this year will always stay with me in my English career. I hope to keep learning as many things as I have last year, so that I will keep growing as a writer, student, and person.

Essay Revision:

Ever since I was a child, I did not have a big interest for reading. I used to always think of reading as one of my last priorities, instead of doing it first off when I get home. But one day, my mom and I were talking about what book I should read next (we have to read every night) because I was clueless when looking for books. My mom knew that I loved books that had to do around the time period of WW2, and how much they also inspire me. She recommended a few books, like Night by Ellie Wiesel and also Goodnight Maman by Norma Fox Mazer (which I ended up reading later 8^th grade year), but the book that seemed most interesting to me was this book called Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. I was hesitant about reading this, because my mom has recommended books to me before that were not always the most interesting. I decided to give the book a shot anyways, because I had nothing else to lose. The first night I started reading Sarah’s Key though, I knew it was a book for me.

            Sarah’s Key was a story of a typical 1940’s French girl, named Sarah, who was awakened one night to something that would change her life forever. She was sound asleep in her bed, when she frighteningly heard shouts and bangs at the door. All she could hear was “OPEN UP! IT’S THE POLICE!” from outside the apartment door. When her mother finally answered the door, they were told that they must be evacuated immediately. Sarah had a little brother who she was afraid would not be able to keep up with everything that was going to go on (even though what she imagined was not even half as bad as what was coming for her), so she told him to hide in a secret closet kept inside the house with a cup of water. As she locked the door with her special key, she reassured him that she would be back in a couple of hours after everything was resolved. Little did she know that she would not be going back to her house for a very long time? After this, her, her mother and father were all evacuated into an arena called the Veledrome de’Hiver (which would be known as one of the saddest, most depressing times for France in the war). There were 13,152 Jews that were kept here until they were shipped off to places like Auschwitz where many later died and others lucky to have their lives.

            The interesting part of this book is that when something would happen in Sarah’s story in 1942, it went to a completely different story about a woman named Julia from present day. She was a young writer who had a good life of living in France with a handsome husband and a wonderful daughter. She went into work one day, when she was told that she was going to have to write an article about the anniversary of the Vel di’Hiv Roundup. This astounded her because she had never heard of any Vel di’Hiv before. Many Parisians saw this as so depressing that they didn’t even want to talk about it. Once she starts doing research and learned more about this terrible event, she sees that one of the families that was evacuated into the Vel di’Hiv used to live in the same apartment as her husbands family. This automatically attached her to the story of this family, and where they may be today.

            As the story progressed, Julia finds more and more clues leading up to this girl, like when she found out that Sarah had ended up moving back to the United States. Julia was even more attached now to Sarah because she was originally from the United States. While she is having this amazing research done, she also has a lot of family troubles along the way. Julia desperately wanted another child, while her husband was fine with the daughter they already had. After begging her husband for ages, he forbade her from having another. Nonetheless, she still got pregnant and was worried to see what her husband’s reaction would be when he found out. She was not sure about what he would do, (divorce, abort the baby, have it?) or how he would do it. She ended up telling him and he thought it would be best if she got an abortion. She went to the hospital and was about to get the abortion when she realized that this was not just his baby, which she had every right to keep and have it no matter what he says.

            So you can see that these are two very different stories, but in between them you can see similarities and resemblance to one another in their lives. When Julia had found out that Sarah had survived the concentration camp and went back to America, she also realized that she had met a man and gotten married! I will not spoil it, but it does lead her to a whole other adventure from country to country (France, America, Italy, etc.). Julia finds out some pretty amazing, yet tragic things that will keep your eyes glued to the book for hours.

            Sarah’s Key was that book that changed my mind or point of view on reading. It taught me that books are not always those “you have to read this” situations. I just have to keep an open mind about what to read, and soon enough I will find some pretty amazing books, probably in a different genre, author that I ever thought I would read. I look at reading now as something I look forward to every night after I am done with all my homework. Those moments when I am looking at the last paragraph of the book and having that feeling of “yes! I got another book done!”

Writing Center Response:

After going to the writing center, I realized how much it has helped me. I used to be afraid to go to the writing center, because I thought I would pretty much be judged by my writing, and everything I did bad on. I now see that they embrace your writing and just help you with certain things that you include better within your paper. My meeting went very well. After reading my paper to the writing center worker, she helped me immediately by issues that many people have, and also what kinds of things that I could add to my paper to make it sound more sophisticated and less "5th grade writing". During the meeting, we saw that one of my key "misses" was my overuse of pronouns. After re-reading, I got myself confused with who was who, because I kept using the pronoun "it" or "she". That was one of the main things that I revised. The other thing that I revised was my word choice. I tried to change out some of my plain words for more sophisticated words. I feel like these are my main problems in all my papers, and I will slowly but surely improve until it is barely notice

Hits and Misses:

Throughout this year, we have experimented with many different types of writing. We have done personally writing such as the Literacy Narrative, and we have also done more fact writing such as the Research paper. I have enjoyed all of them in different ways, but there is key things within some of these writings that I exceptionally loved or hated.
First, in my literacy narrative, I enjoyed that I got to tell my own story in a paper, and how it affected ME personally. Usually in english class I write in a 3rd person, not allowing me as a writer anywhere in the paper. I enjoyed that I was going into a descriptive manner on many things that I enjoyed about the book, like how I read it, how I may have reacted, or maybe even what I think of reading now. I also enjoyed that throughout the year, Dr. D let us have a free post from time to time. I liked how we got to write anything we wanted and express the way we felt through our blogs. I felt like some of my free posts were my best writings of the year. I'm guessing it's because I got to write what interested me at that time, even though Dr. D's blog outlines were quite interesting.
Some thing that I wasn't very thrilled in writing was the Research Paper. I was very dynamic through this project, because at first I was very excited about my topic, what I could incorporate in my paper, and more. But as time went along, I realized that it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be, so I lost much interest through the research. I didn't think about how hard it would be to blend everything that I wanted to include in my paper. I also didn't think about the length, because after I finished writing my factual information, I seemed to just keep blabbing about random things that weren't even relevant to my paper. Next, I also thought a major "miss" was when we were reading Lord of the Flies. I thought it was a very interesting book, but when it came to things like symbolism and foreshadowing kinds of things, it began to become very difficult and confusing to me. I try to work on that, but something in my head just doesn't click when we do things on that subject. I just don't understand how you find that, how you see it in the writing, or how you are sure that it's the right thing after you find that out. I hope to improve on this, since it is a major role within all kinds of books.

Writing Remix:

Life Long Lessons

It was the first day,

Grades, Relationships, and Looks

Came running after her like they were playing tag.

She doesn’t want to get caught, but if she did,

Which would she pick?

Her boyfriend called her when she got home,

Insisting that she come hangout.

Grades almost caught

Her when Relationships and Looks came and pushed him out the way.

She told her mom she would just be out studying,

Could she really pull it off?

He broke up with her 3 weeks later.

Offering to help Grades up after that mean fall,

Oodles and Oodles of letters bleeding out of him like A’s and B’s; he was so hurt that all 

Left was C’s to F’s. Later her mom had grounded her for sneaking out.

After all the trauma,

From getting pummeled by Relationships and Looks,

The only one that was there for her was Grades.

She felt guilty,

Leaving him hurt like that for all that time.

She graduated with Grades’ good friend Honor,

Without any help from Relationships or Looks.

Sure she always stayed in touch,

But never let Grades out of her sight again.

Analysis of Rhetorical Situations:

I tried my best to use rhetorical strategies to help my new audience understand my look on high school. Instead of just saying my transitions I went through from middle school to high school, I used an actual situation that could help the audience to understand more about my look on it. It explains a girl, who is in a new situation in her life and isn't always sure what to do in it. She's not sure what to be closer to: grades, her look, or her relationships. In the end she realizes that she can be close with all of them, but that she needs to always keep her grades in eyesight. This is to tell rising high schoolers what they might experience as new students in a new world.