Final Portfolio Reflection

 

BreAnna Kennedy

Professor Nall

English Comp. II

30 April 2024

Final Portfolio Reflection

            To start off the semester we began “Assignment #1: Academic Success Proposal.” This assignment was relatively simple. We were to create a proposal for a potential research or informative paper that would include commentary, evidence, and citations of all the sources we used in the proposal. The proposal audience was Ms. Nall and the other students in my class. The purpose of this assignment was basically to give myself and the other students some kind of advice or knowledge on how to succeed academically, because as you go through school it continues to get harder and harder, and many people’s mental health can decline gradually throughout the years, and with that their grades. This assignment was to be written in MLA format which includes a header with a page number, our name, professors name, class subject, and date. Along with MLA format is a title, and everything should be double spaced, size twelve font, and normally “Times New Roman” or something like “Arial” so it can be read easily. The research for this project was relatively easy, however the hardest part was finding credible sources, because if they aren’t credible then that reflects how credible your evidence in your paper is, and that will reflect onto your grade. I also edited things like grammar and formatting, I also proofread my paper at least 5 times over the span of a day or two, and when it came to peer review my favorite part was seeing how everyone else did and what their paper’s were about. But it’s always helpful to get constructive criticism from people, especially when it’s beneficial to something as important as a large grade.

            The next project that Ms. Nall gave us was an “Annotated Bibliography” over a short story of our choosing. The intended audience being Ms. Nall and the other students in the class. I feel that this assignment was really to make sure that we have MLA 9 citing down, because it’s very important when writing papers that you used outside sources for. However, I am sure that many people used the citation button on the platforms we were using which were a part of the schools database. Our “Annotated Bibliography” had the same requirements as the paper before except it wasn’t a paper it’s what you would see at the very bottom of an essay, so it was a little different. This focused on the sources and what they contained. For example, I cited a source in MLA 9 format, and then right under the citation there’s a paragraph. The paragraph is a little bit about what the source included, kind of like reading the back of a book before purchasing it. I didn’t prewrite anything for this assignment, however I did take notes and got help with finding some sources from Ms. Nall. When using the “Database”, it can be very difficult to find a certain number of sources that have relative information, so I needed a little help on that end, but other than that I think I did a pretty good job.

            Lastly, I’d like to talk about my personal favorite project that we did, which was the “Short Story Project.” Little did I know, the whole time we were writing summaries and submitting the “Book Jacket Quotes” we were preparing for this specific project. I appreciate how Ms. Nall didn’t throw all of it on us at once, because that would’ve been overwhelming. But, for the project we had to create what I would call a digital book jacket, which includes cover art (relative to the story), a summary of the short story, and “About the Author” summary, and on essentially what would be the back cover of the book we had to create more cover art and use some of our “Book Jacket Quotes”, which were reviews on the short story, in order to grab people’s attention and make them want to read the story. The easiest part for me was creating my design for the “Book Jacket”, I love being creative and when I get to be creative with an assignment, it makes the assignment much more enjoyable for me. I did in fact prewrite the summary without knowing because Ms. Nall had us submit a summary and an analyzation of the short story in a discussion board before we began working on the project, but other than that nothing was prewritten, I did it all as I went. I proofread all my assignments before I turned them in, after I turned them in, and when I was submitting them for peer review. This was the only project that didn’t necessarily have to be formatted with MLA, except the citations were supposed to be in MLA 9 format.

            I’d like to conclude my reflection by saying that this class along with Comp. I has opened my mind to many different things, and it resonated with me personally. I absolutely enjoyed this class, and I wish I had taken Ms. Nall in person, because on every video I could just tell by her voice that she was a not only good teacher, but she enjoys teaching English Composition.