Protfolio- Rusaila

 Initial Expectations 

Essay Writing 2 (EW2), is a course that contains an argumentative essay, a literature review essay, reflective writing, peer review writing, and a presentation. This course is a requirement for my major, English literature, that must be taken after Essay Writing 1 (EW1). I was told in (EW1) that (EW2) will contain harder content and more word count than (EW1), However, I was kind of disappointed after realizing that the word count did not change from (EW1) in the argumentative essay which broke my expectations. My (EW1) Doctor, made sure to make the course easygoing and more related to (EW2) content.

(EW1) in my opinion, was more fun and easy to learn due to the way the course was presented. The course's main goal was to make students realize their mistakes day by day, the opposite of this course, students only realize their mistakes after getting their essay’s score/ grade which is kind of heartbreaking. For me, in (EW1) every day our essays get corrected which made our final submission nothing less than perfect. I am not criticizing this course, but I wished it would focus on helping students rather than giving them disappointing grades. 

(EW1) is similar to (EW2) in the course content, I learned in both courses how to write an argumentative essay, in addition, to how to do a presentation. (EW1) helped me with writing the argumentative essay more than (EW2). The courses which also helped me in doing the presentation are the First-year seminar and (EW2). Furthermore, (EW1) and (EW2) taught me how to write a proper thesis statement by using more than one type. 

My disappointment in (EW2) is in the way the lectures are given. I appreciate the Doctor’s hard work in giving the lecture, however, it would be better if it was not that way. The things that are given in the lectures are known things for (EW2) students, and if they need to be explained, it would be better if they were briefly discussed or explained. For example, paraphrasing, summarization, and quotations would have been better if they were explained briefly and not precisely, and rather than giving more lectures/ classes about them, it would be better to make them more time to write the essays and assignments. 

Moreover, the number of assignments is so much that we students cannot catch up with them. But it helped me to organize my time and work hard for it, still, I am not happy with the outcomes and with how things went. The only new things I learned in this course are writing the literature review and the portfolio, which made me feel happy writing about it and discovering it by searching and listening to the lectures. 

Selected Course Work

As I mentioned before, the assignments that we had to do were; 2 Reflections, 1 Argumentative essay, 1 Literature review essay, and a presentation. These assignments have developed my way of writing and made me learn many things:

The argumentative essay; “Importance of History” is my first ever essay in this course (EW2). Due to this course and my previous course (EW1) I was able to fulfill the CLO1 by supporting my claims using different sources and various types of evidence, such as stories, statistics, and more! Also, I knew how to cite my counterargument in a convenient way thanks to this course and lectures. At first, I struggled with how to start my introduction since I am not good at it, but with the help of the doctor during her office hours, I kind of knew how to develop my introduction with a good thesis statement. The body paragraphs were easy to write since I had many ideas to pour out in my essay. Using as many shreds of evidence as possible was the fun part for me since I love discovering new stories and pieces of information. I found it hard to transfer from one paragraph to the other, which made me lose various marks. Also, I struggled with not writing the full evidence by trying to minimize them due to the word count of the essay. What disappointed me was my grade (80/100) on this argumentative essay; in my whole life I have never got such a bad grade in essays (I am surely not saying I never make wrongs) but I never expected to get a low grade even after going to the Doctor’s office hours and check the essay with her. It was a heartbreaking moment for me and encouraged me to stop asking for help from the Doctor during office hours. I am not trying to be rude, I appreciate her hard work, however, I did not get the help that I expected to get in this course, especially in my first argumentative essay in it. Even though I was never happy with my grades in this essay, I changed my style of writing and started being more precise in my way of writing.

Moreover, throughout this course, I have done peer review for two students, correcting their mistakes and giving them my opinion on their work. It covered the CLO3 of this course. Normally, I hate correcting or reading other’s assignments because I believe that it is hard for me to correct them or that I do not have enough knowledge to be correcting other people’s/students’ assignments. I struggled at first with expressing my opinion and correcting what I see wrong. However, I started to do the opposite on this peer review and gave it my all which helped me a lot, in addition, the Doctor’s way of correcting and class activities encouraged me to do so. It helped me to gain confidence in correcting others’ essays and writings, and also, in expressing my opinion about something.

Furthermore, the Literature review research that we did in class which contained; the research proposal and the literature review, covered the CLO2 and CLO4. Starting with CLO2, the research proposal that was made by my partner Rahma and I has covered our research name, research question, research sub-questions, and some bullet points of our research. We struggled at the very first with finding the perfect research question for our research, then we struggled in making our sub-questions because our research has various points and information so it was hard to choose between them. While doing the Research Proposal, I realized how to organize the work equally with my partner; because I am used to taking all the work in my past courses, however in this course I had a real teamwork experience with my partner. After finishing the research proposal, and the literature review my partner and I did cover the CLO4. We learn how to fully use the MPA style in our literature review research. Also, we made sure to apply all the citation rules thanks to the links the Doctor has sent us throughout this course, they are extremely useful for students who struggle with applying the MPA style fully. Lastly, I learned how to write an abstract and a literature review for the first time, which made me feel proud. 

Lastly, the final presentation covered the CLO5 of this course. What made me struggle is the way I am going to present the presentation. This is my first time presenting in class. In my whole years of university, I have only presented online, so presenting face-to-face was a big challenge for me. I thought I will do badly, however, I was impressed by how I presented. Even though I struggled at first, but then I enjoyed presenting our research paper. What was fun in doing the presentation is the designing part. I love designing PowerPoint, and making this PowerPoint pretty was my very first goal to do. I learned how to present bravely in front of everyone in this course and I learned how to be on time even while presenting.

Growing as a writer

This course has made me realize that there is no perfection in writing. I used to think that my writing is perfect, there is no need to take courses for writing essays, assignments, and more, however, I discovered that I need to develop my writing because even if I thought of it as good writing, there is better. At first, I thought I don't need to write an argumentative essay, but discovered that I still need more practice. I kind of felt down after receiving my argumentative essay grade, but that will not make me stop writing! It made me feel the urge to write more to improve in a better way!

Throughout this course, I learned many things such as the literature review, abstract, and working in a team and not individually. This course developed me in many ways as I mentioned throughout this portfolio. However, the only problem I faced was the long, kind of boring lectures about academic writing. I also changed my way of thinking about this course. All I wanted was to get an A, however, I believe I don't mind not getting an A because all I care about right now is finishing this course with the ability of writing.

 I am planning on writing short stories in the future, then developing my writing into writing novels rather than short stories. I learned how to express my feelings and my writing as a first step! and now I am searching and learning further steps to fulfill my dream!