Portfolio Quick Links
- Overview
- Length and Due Date
- Guidelines for Portfolio Selections
- Guidelines for Reflective Essay
- Grading
Course Information
Instructor: K. Gillis-Bridges
Class: MW, 12:30-1:50 p.m.
Rooms: Mary Gates 082A/082
Office:
Padelford A-105
Hours: MW 11 a.m.-12 p.m.
Phone/Voice: 206.543.4892
Email: kgb@u
Portfolio and Reflective Essay
Overview
During finals week, you will turn in a portfolio of selected writing and a reflective essay evaluating the work you’ve done over the quarter and the progress you’ve made as a critical writer. Remember the goals of English 197:
- to critically analyze films,
- to formulate and explore complex claims,
- to engage the work of film scholars,
- to identify significant questions and characteristic ways of building arguments in cinema studies,
- to evaluate your own writing as well as that of your colleagues, and
- to use feedback to revise your drafts
The portfolio may also include a revision of one of your essays; if you choose this option, the grade for the revision will replace your original assignment grade. You will submit your portfolio and reflective essay electronically via Collect It.
Length and Due Date
Length: 2-3 pages, formatted as described in the “Essays” portion of the syllabus
Due: Wednesday, December 10, by 10:00 p.m. via Collect
It.
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Guidelines for Portfolio Selections
For your portfolio, you will select from your essays, homework and electronic responses, and peer critiques. The portfolio must include the following items:
- A writing assignment that you improved significantly from first draft to final version. Include both the first and final drafts in the portfolio.
- Two shorter assignments that best reflect your strengths as a critical thinker and/or writer. These can be homework assignments, electronic responses, and/or peer reviews.
- An optional, substantial revision of one or your essays. If you revise an essay, include the graded draft as well as the revision in the portfolio. “Substantial revision” means more than just changing a few sentences and correcting mechanical errors; rather, you must expand critical analysis, restructure ideas, and strengthen the overall argument.
- Graded drafts of all other essay assignments.
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Guidelines for the Reflective Essay
Your reflective essay will explain how your portfolio selections illustrate your development as an analytical thinker and writer in cinema studies. Consider the portfolio an opportunity to gain a critical understanding of yourself as a reader, writer, and thinker by examining your writing and writing process. Reflective essays should contain the following elements:
- Title
- Introductory paragraph
- Discussion of how you’ve met course goals. Reference specific portfolio
selections to illustrate your analysis. For example, how does your work
show your ability to pose and explore tentative arguments? How do your homework
and electronic responses exemplify critical film analysis or engagement
with film scholars (Dr. Bean as well as article authors)? How do your peer
reviews offer detailed evaluation of a draft’s strengths and weaknesses?
What revisions did you make to your most improved essay and how do those
changes demonstrate your ability to craft substantive arguments and to develop
those arguments with appropriate, fully analyzed evidence? Overall, how
have your practices of critical thinking, reading, and writing changed as
a result of your work this quarter? How does your written work document
these changes?
- If you include a revised writing assignment, describe what you have
altered and explain how the revision substantially reworks the graded draft.
Does the revision present a clearer, more focused, and complex argument
than the graded draft? Feature more effective support for your claims? Present
a more cohesive and better-structured development of your thesis? Use language
more effectively?
- Conclusion: You might discuss the insights you’ve developed about horror film, film in general, film criticism, and/or critical writing as a result of your work in English 197 and Comparative Literature 272. What does your work tell you about who you are as a writer, critical film-viewer, reader, or student?
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Grading
I will grade your portfolio and reflective essay on a 40-point scale:
- A Range: 35-40 points
- B Range: 25-34 points
- C Range: 15-24 points
- D Range: 7-14 points
- F Range: 0-6 points
I will use the following grading criteria to evaluate the portfolio and reflective essay:
- Focus: The reflective essay explains how selected documents demonstrate the author's development as a cinema studies writer and thinker.
- Complexity: The reflective essay exhibits depth, fullness, and complexity of thought.
- Development and Evidence: The author illustrates his/her discussion of learning with well-chosen portfolio selections and persuasive references to those documents. Moreover, the writer provides detailed analysis of all evidence cited.
- Organization: Reflective essay follows logical structure.
- Completeness: The author includes all required portfolio selections and his/her reflective essay features all required elements.
- Clarity: The writer expresses ideas clearly.
Late portfolios will receive a 10-point deduction per day late, including weekends and holidays. I will make exceptions to the lateness policy only in cases of documented illness or family emergency. Please remember that technology glitches do not constitute valid excuses for lateness.
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