WK 4B Portfolio

So, the big day has arrived. Choose two of your flash nonfiction pieces from the writing assignments, or, if you wish, from journal entries if you’d written something particularly compelling there that you think will make a great essay.

(1) One of the essays you will revise conventionally–that is, according to what you’ve learned about nonfiction and the specific feedback you’ve gotten from me and/or fellow students to make that particular essay the best it can be.

(2) The other essay I will ask you to experiment with and attack it from an entirely different perspective. I’m not asking for merely a revision of the earlier draft, but instead a totally new treatment of the subject. Perhaps you’d like to take a travel narrative and turn it into a how-to essay. Perhaps you’d like to argue from an opposing side of an issue that you focused on in an earlier essay. Perhaps you’d like to rethink your entire perspective on something that happened in a memoir event. Perhaps you’d like to shift the point of view of the essay. What sort of radical shift you make in the approach to the subject matter is up to you. Be as creative and experimental as you like. I’ll reward you for taking a rhetorical risk and penalize you for playing it safe and sticking close to the design of the old essay. Feel free to run any ideas you have by me if you’re so inclined.

Each final essay should be between 500-750 words. Include your best versions of the two essays along with a one-paragraph analysis for each in which you explain what you learned about writing from the assignment and progression of that particular essay. In the analysis paragraph, be sure to include literary vocabulary you’ve learned along the way when discussing the essay (e.g., hook, point of view, structure, diction, grammar, imagery, dialogue, setting, hyperbole, personification, metaphor, etc.)

Submit both essays and the two analysis paragraphs in one .pdf file or Word document.This portfolio is worth 40% of your grade, so give the papers and paragraphs plenty of thought and care. Make sure you fix anything specific that I pointed out in your drafts. I look forward to seeing how far your writing has journeyed this summer!