Welcome to my ENC1101 e-portfolio!   

        ENC 1101 has taught me plenty about writing and rhetoric but it’s also taught me a lot about myself. This class has given me the tools that I needed to understand writing, including my own, to a much deeper level. Now I am considering every part of a text as a rhetorical choice that the author made to achieve a specific rhetorical goal. Metacognition is a new concept that was introduced to me in this class. It is basically just understanding your own thought process and thinking about whether or not it is the best way to approach a task. 

        I used that to reconsider my writing process. I would rarely utilize all the steps of the writing process to really produce my best work. I usually devoted most of my time to making my first draft as good as possible so that I wouldn’t need to do too much revision work. This is why my AP English Language and Composition Exam essay is important to my portfolio. It shows the mistakes that I was making before I started thinking about my process. I also wanted to include this essay because I see it as a pivotal moment in my writing career. Since I wrote that essay and failed that test I’ve been striving to learn from my past mistakes and grow as much as possible. 

        The next part of my portfolio is a speech that I wrote when I was in 11th grade. This was the first time that I had ever written a speech that I would deliver to a pretty important audience. It was an entry into the UN speech contest where the finalists were invited to deliver their speeches to a very distinguished audience including the Prime Minister of Curacao. I think this speech shows my ability to produce good work without any help. It seemed impossible at first but what I was able to do when I finally jumped in headfirst was surprising to me. It was one of the first times that I chose to do a project because I wanted to, not because it was assigned to me by a teacher.  

        Since then, I've learned a lot about writing but there is still plenty to learn. In my Unit 1 Project for ENC1101, I wrote about things that I wonder about writing. I asked questions that I am now able to answer. That was how we got this class started and it gave me an idea of what I would learn in the class. I had never written anything like this project, I would always have a more defined purpose than just my general wonderings about writing. With a little bit of work, the project was done and I think I came up with a few very interesting questions about writing. We had already read a few sources as a class at that point and I was thinking about my past work and what I may have been doing wrong. That kind of review of past work was what really helped me come up with several questions about what I could be doing better in my writing. One of the outcomes that ENC1101 is supposed to have is that I should be able to identify personal areas for growth in writing, thinking, and learning. From this very first project I was reflecting on my past work and how I can grow in those areas. 

        Now nearing the end of the course, I am once again reflecting on my past work and how it has affected me as a writer. Another outcome of the course is that we should be able to develop effective strategies for completing writing tasks. I discuss my strategy when completing a writing assignment in my personal writing theory. My personal writing theory is essentially a collection of claims that I have made about writing. It shows what I have learned throughout the course and it answers some of the questions that I was wondering about at the beginning. In putting together this portfolio, I am reflecting on what I have learned but also how I have changed as a writer. The personal writing theory is meant to showcase how I am now able to make claims about writing and synthesize information from sources. I feel that I gained some real clarity about how to effectively make use of a source and write concisely without too much “fluff”. The work that I am using to put together my personal writing theory is a good showcase of some of the course outcomes that I have accomplished.