Dear reader,
Growing up in China, I barely had any education about English literacy. I understood this class must be a challenge for me and I might experience frustration, anxiety or even desperation, just because I had zero knowledge of professional English writing. I went to this class with fear at first, but still I have successfully finished it. This portfolio includes two projects, the Literacy Inventory project and the Literacy Resource project, I have completed in UWP 1Y class, and they represent the progress I made in writing.
The Literacy Inventory project consists of four parts, the Inventory Log, the Inventory Essay, Literacy Infographic and presentation. The Inventory Log records my literacy acts in 48 hours, and my infographic and presentation analyze and conclude my daily literacy activities. My infographic contains two charts, which present the hours I spend on different activities and on each literacy activities. When you combine my infographic to my presentation, you can understand the value of literacy in my life. The most important part of this project is the Inventory essay. It not only analyzes and summarizes my log and infographic based on Knoblauch, but also shows my improvement as a writer. This portfolio contains the first draft and the final draft of my essay. When you compare these two drafts, you will see the improvements I made by revised my essay over and over again.
In my Inventory essay, I talk about the difference between real-life literacy and Knoblauch’s definitions of literacy. I observed some connections between different literacy forms in my Inventory log, connections that Knoblauch does not mention in his “Literacy and the Politics of Education”. I tried to examine functional, personal growth and critical literacy and their connection between each other. I also talked about a new form of literacy, academic literacy, as the most popular form of literacy among college students. My ideas seemed organized in my mind, but my first draft turned out to be a disaster. I just simply laid out each paragraph in my essay without further explanation about their connection. My essay looked broken. I had no idea about revision, because my high school English classes only focused on timed writing, which did not require students to revise their work. I made an appointment with a writing expert at SASC, hoping to learn something about revision.
This thirty minutes discussion with writing expert Dr. Sitz turned out to be very helpful. I received some useful suggestion on revision. After reading through my essay, writing expert Dr. Sitz first suggested me to work on the transaction between paragraphs. I wanted to discuss the connection of different literacy forms, but my essay failed to present their connection. Therefore I needed to work hard on connecting each paragraphs together and making my essay flow. Secondly, he asked me to think about the position of the paragraph that talks about academic literacy. In my first draft, I put it right before the conclusion paragraph and presented it as a new form of literacy. Functional, personal growth and critical literacy were displayed in my essay in order, because each of them depended on the previous one. Academic literacy came out of nowhere, and appeared at the end my discussion about critical literacy. He suggested me to come up with some connection to relate academic literacy to functional, personal growth or critical literacy. As you can see in my final draft, I consider academic literacy to be the combination of functional and personal growth literacy and place this paragraph right after personal growth literacy. This experience taught me the importance of connection in writing. Although the content of each paragraph might be different, a good writer still needs to work out the connection between each one of them and make an essay coherent.
After I revised my essay based on expert’s suggestion, I thought my essay was ready to put into this portfolio, because I had done a lot of revision. The comments I received from professor still suggest some problems. Paragraphs seemed interconnected to each other, but not to my thesis, because there were no topic sentences to summarize each paragraph and reinforced my thesis. I put more effort on reinforce my thesis in each paragraph during this revision process. In my final draft of the Inventory essay, I add topic sentences to summarize the main idea of every paragraph and connect it back to my thesis. My thesis statement was also a bit vague and lack of detail. In my thesis statement, I wrote, “It usually acquires certain knowledge of each literacy form to accomplish a complex literacy act.” Yet I did not give any explanation about what was a complex literacy act. Similar mistakes happened a lot in my essay. I always kept some detail in my mind and naively thought there was no need to explain. I was afraid of explaining everything would make my essay redundant, but forgot the most important thing in writing is clarity. In my final draft, I gave some examples of complex literacy acts, so that my reader could have a clear understanding of what complex literacy acts represented. After revised my essay based on professor’s comments, I understood the importance of clarity and topic sentences. I should never leave my thesis statement vague and I should write topic sentences to maintain the connection between paragraphs and thesis. I hope with all these revision, when you read my essay lying in this portfolio, you can get a clear and logical thesis statement and a flow essay.
The second project included in this portfolio is the Literacy Resource project. In this project, I should give some advices to future UWP 1 students. Therefore I chose to write about the most important thing I learn from this class, revision. I selected pamphlet as my genre because pamphlet is divided into different sections. This feature not only met my requirement to present different kinds of revision, but also makes it easier to access. Students can only read sections that they are interest in, but not the whole pamphlet. My pamphlet began with an introduction of the importance and the benefits of revision. Then I introduced different kinds of revision. I classified revision into three kinds, self-revision, peer revision and expert revision. I talked about what to focused on different revision process and what kinds of benefits they could offer. In order to make this pamphlet less formal so that students would be more likely to read it, I interviewed my friend who already took this class and a writing expert at SASC. I use their and my own experience to talk about revision and offer future students some first-hand information about revision. The most important and valuable part of my pamphlet is the expert revision part, because it offers professional opinions about revision and writing. Dr. Struman talks about what she will focus on expert revision, what makes expert revision special among other two kinds of revision and what are the qualities of good UWP 1 essays. Hopefully after future UWP 1 students read this pamphlet, they can realize the value and advantages of revision; they can get to know different kinds of revision so that they can choose whether revise their work by themselves or ask peer reviewers or experts for help. This Literacy Resource project allows me to have a better understanding of revision. Interviewing peer reviewer and expert helps me to comprehend revision from others’ perspective. Their advice is not only useful for future UWP 1 students but also for me.
These two projects in this portfolio stand for what I learn from this class. I have grown from a person who had no knowledge of English writing to a person who understand and value the importance of connection between paragraphs, topic sentences, clear thesis statement and revision. I also learn about how to make infographic, how to make a pamphlet and how to interview others. For me this six weeks experience is valuable.
Sincerely,
Yulin Hong
Yulin Hong's Portfolio 