Emelin Trujillo

Professor Beadle

English 115

9 December 2019

Portfolio Reflection

Over the course I feel like my writing has improved in all areas such as creating a thesis,

topic sentence and a little on grammar. I feel a lot more comfortable rather than in the beginning

of the semester I felt stuck when I had to write an essay because I didn’t know what components

to add into my essay to make it a good essay. Writing the three different that we wrote in class

Project Space Essay, Project Text, and Project Media was very helpful because we started with

something simple then adding different component such as a confuter argument and a rebuttal.

In the beginning of the semester when we had to write our first essay which was the

Project Text it was so difficult to do. The reason to that is because I’ve always struggled on

putting together a center argument which would be my thesis. I’ve always been told that if you

have a strong thesis that is straight forward you have a great essay because your body paragraphs

will just build on to your argument and support it. But it’s a lot harder than what it seems like

because you have to keep referring to your thesis it in each body paragraph which is what I had

trouble with. When I received my essay back, I reflected on what I did okay on and what I didn’t

to well on. I noticed that I needed to work on was making sure I created that sandwich template

when I cited evidence. For the following essay I would try to refer back to this first essay to not

do the same errors again.

On the second essay which was the Project Text, this essay we added in a counter

argument and outside sources. Which meant we had to make sure the argument was strong
enough to be supported with outside evidence not just the text and having a strong counter

argument. With this essay I believe I did way better than with my first essay because the braining

storming, we did I was able to choose a topic that would fit in with society as a whole. I also

went to the LRC for this essay which really helped me. My tutor help come up with templated I

could use to make a strong thesis. I wrote my thesis about three times to make sure it was good

enough and easy to understand. From my last essay to this essay I can say that my writing

improved I was adding context to my evidence, but I still wasn’t making clear enough on how it

justified my point.

I believe my last essay was my best essay I put together everything I have learned from

my past essays. For this essay I also went to the LRC and my tutor stated that I have improved

my thesis was much better than it was for my last essay. My topic sentence was a good start just

need to make sure to connect them to my thesis. The Project Media to me was a lot easier to

break down because each paragraph had its own idea but yet connects to my main argument. For

this essay from my peer review I got a lot of good feedback of the way my essay was written. I

made sure I was using the sandwich template to have evidence to back up my argument but also

explain how it was being done.

This semester really helped me develop better habits for my writing. I found the reverse

outline very helpful, writing my essay, having my prompt and creating an outline based of my

essay to make sure I had the introduction with a thesis and topic sentence with evidence and

analysis. A strategy I developed on created a strong thesis was by answering the prompt using

words from the prompt. When doing that I knew that my body paragraphs would have to have

topic sentence that answer the question of “how” or “why” my thesis was true. When that was
done the evidence had to support my “why or how”. Overall my writing has been became a lot

more clear and straightforward.