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Josh Hewitt

Emre Koyuncu

ENG 106

March 30, 2012

Portfolio Overview

Every book, every essay, every sentence, and everything ever written has the opportunity

to be revised. Revision is an important part of writing and the revision cycle never ends. Any-

thing can be rewritten to sound better, get one’s point across better, or fix errors that were previ-

ously made. This is the point of this clever assignment and will teach us students a valuable les-

son that will aid us in our future compositions.

My portfolio consists of four revised assignments; my photo essay, my rationale, my es-

say on Timothy Treadwell, and my work cited page for the death penalty assignment. Like all

other compositions, these needed to be revised for better comprehension. I used the feedback

from my instructor, Emre Koyuncu, and my personal decisions to come up with the best strategy

to revise my assignments. The written feedback on my assignments/grading rubrics and the dis-

cussion during our portfolio conference led me in the right direction.

The first assignment I revised was the photo essay. Although I received a good grade on

this assignment, there were several things to revise. I added a white background behind each cap-

tion and made the captions bold to make them more readable. The main text was too small and

needed to cover more space below the picture so I enlarged the font and background behind it.

This way, there isn’t as much unnecessary space around the text. I also discovered the auto-align

tool which helped me perfectly align the elements on the page. The layout looked noticeably bet-

ter once everything was aligned perfectly rather than freehanded. Some of the sentences in the

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main text did not flow well so I rewrote them to sound better. I had planned to retake some pic-

tures but the weather did not permit this. My plan was to take pictures of students using the exer-

cise equipment, playing basketball, and studying under the shelter but the rain and cold weather

kept the students inside. If I had taken new pictures, I could have also omitted the dates that were

inconveniently placed on my first set of pictures.

Next, I briefly revised my rationale for the photo essay. My instructor did not write any

negative comments on this, so I simply reworded some sentences to make them read better. I also

added the changes I had made to the photo essay and explained why I made them.

Thirdly, I took a look at my essay on Timothy Treadwell essay. I think that the overall or-

der and outline of the essay was good so I did not make any changes to that. My instructor wrote

several suggestions on my paper to help with the revision. First, I changed the title to be more in-

teresting. I changed it from “Uncovering the Grizzly Man” to “A Deadly Summer with Bears”.

The main revising I focused on was making sentences and paragraphs flow better. I fixed the

mistakes that my instructor pointed out and made several changes of my own. As I read through

the essay, some sentences sounded unnatural and were difficult to interpret. I simply reworded

them to make them more readable. One of my in-text citations was incorrect so I excluded the

comma in between the author and page number. I had a few spelling mistakes that I corrected as

well. Another thing I changed was my thesis statement. In my first draft, I explained in my con-

clusion that I thought Herzog made a good documentary and expressed my opinions about him.

My instructor pointed out that it was a new argument and I had not mentioned this before the

conclusion. To fix this, I added in my thesis statement that Herzog did a great job of portraying

Treadwell and I also mentioned it throughout the rest of the essay. The last thing I edited was my

work cited page. I needed to make the title of the documentary, Grizzly Man, italicized.

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For bonus points, I took the opportunity to revise my work cited page for my capital pun-

ishment assignment. The only thing I needed to change for this was the same mistake I had made

on my last work cited page. I needed to italicize the title of the documentary The Thin Blue

Line.

Overall, I believe this assignment taught me a good lesson that I will carry with me to

other classes. I am grateful to have had a good instructor to give me helpful feedback and aid me

with my revisions. I think all the changes I made were worthwhile and helped my assignments

look and sound more professional.