In my portfolio, I have chosen to put in my Olive Branch Petition Text Analysis, my second essay, and my essay #2 reflection. The reason I chose to use these writing in my portfolio is because they show my growth in the areas I needed, my critical thinking, the way I write, and summery and analysis skills.
When I look back on my high school writing classes, they were run of the mill, very bleak classes that didn’t help me what so ever. They never challenged the way I write and I usually pulled essays together at the last minute with bogus information.
The reason I like History and Writing 101 is because the classes challenge the way I think and process data. I actually have to think about what I’m reading and writing instead of repeating what a book said then forgetting it after the assignment is over. The stuff we have covered in the classes will probably stick with me till I die because I have had to think critically on them during the in class discussions and the writing assignments that I have completed. The fact that our teachers actual read our work instead of looking for a 5 paragraph format has really taut me how to write and what to look for in my writing while editing. Completing this 12 week course has taught me more than a traditional 1 year class. Yeah it was hard and stressful half the time but it was not unwarranted, every ting they have us do has a porpoise to help us become better writers and have a more in depth understanding of history. That is why I have chosen these 3 items to go in my portfolio, I believe that they show my best work in the sense that I have matured and grown wiser in my writing skill.
The olive branch petition text analysis shows my honed in depth analysis of a 5 page document that was for the King of England. I did a lot of work on this piece and I never thought that I could scrutinize every detail of a document and piece together why they said that or asked that question.
The second essay I did was that I had to be Loyalists in the late 1700’s in the state of North Carolina, and I had to write a persuasive essay explaining why I was a loyalist and why the reader should be too. This paper is by far the best writing I have ever completed, the reason I had to rewrite it was because I forgot to proof read it and it had some words missing, but besides that I put my heart and mostly my mind into reading primary documents and piecing together a well rounded argument for my cause.
Overall, Coming to PSEC and taking Ben and Craig’s class has shown me that I’m not a bad writer; I just didn’t know how to write. I had no idea of how much work and mind power it takes to write a good piece of literature. I used to hate reading quotes and other things that were assigned to me, but now that I have learned so much I like challenging my mind analyzing and thinking about why people write this and that. It’s really embarrassing to look back at my past work and then to look at my present work, I can see a major turnaround for me. I can tell of how much I have learned during the past 12 weeks because I could never write about anything this in depth with out serious work and now I can do it for all my assignments. I believe that is my greatest achievement.
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2 comments:
I think this is a good draft, you need examples of the work you did, like for the text analysis maybe add some notes you wrote on that document. Also i wouldn't say you had to write this or that, instead just say i wrote an essay on being a loyalist in North Carolina. otherwise it sounds like you are just writing cause you "have to"
This is a pretty good rough but, for our reflective letter we need to write about our strengths and weaknesses of our writing and so far your rough just has how the class has helped but nothing much about your progress. Also you need to add some quotes proving your strengths and weaknesses of your writing. Other then that, your rough is coming along pretty well.
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