Yin Hang, Kwok Professor Suzanne Ingram English 1101-001 2 December 2013 Portfolio Essay When I sit in front

of the writing desk and pick up my pen, I am thinking about how to write and what I want to write continuously. Even I am not the outstanding student but the curious and creativity give impetus to me in writing. In English 1101-001, I keep to learn how to imitate native writers and how they treat their essays. Improve my writing skills in different assignments and different writing styles, such as blog post and narrative. Discover and study new ideas and put them into my writing. These experience give me a big advance in my writing and also open a door for higher writing paths. My E-Portfolio is a collection of all assignments and works that I finished in English1101. Every works in my E-Portfolio is not only recorded what I did in class, but also reflected how I treated writing. I have to confront my works are not good enough in class but as a non-English user, I did try my best in every writing. The best thing in English1101, lecturer and classmates shared ideas and suggestions in each writing. It did give a concept to me and improved my thinking. Every time we submitted our writing assignment, classmates and lecturer gave revise and it amended my writing. Therefore, our writing kept improving after first draft and it benefited us in thinking and writing. For example, I feel you did a good job explaining what you experienced but please go into more detail to specific parts. The reader can experience what

you experienced in Hong Kong. said Deepan Patel. As my E-Portfolio is a collection of all works in English1101, I put them in order by time. The first one is blog post because blog is continuous assignment and putting it in first place is convenient to lecturer and guests for visit my blog. The second one is final drafts which included my high school literacy narrative and genre study assignment. It is because these two assignments are the major assignment in this course. Following final drafts is my midterm because it is the essay to tell readers how I treat these key concept which is the core of this course. Work artifacts, Writers Notebook artifacts and wild card are following in this order. Writers Notebook artifacts is my Reader Response Letters, and the wild card is my book report in organic Chemistry class. I put them in this order because work artifacts reflect the way before I wrote my assignments and it is most easy path to explain these reasons I wrote my assignment on that way. It is because I had little improvement by the time I did more and more writing. Writers Notebook artifacts is these RRL that mentions the writing book, essay and blog post which related with this course and how these essay benefit me in writing. Also, readers could take a look on each assignment to know the changing of my writing. It is because I had little improvement by the time I did more and more writing.

Blog post In the blog post assignment, the contents of each blog post are related to college, writing and what challenge we faced in writing. For example , we mentioned about what is the key concept that bother us in the first blog post. After we submitted our blog post, lecturer and classmates left comments. The most challenge blog post is analysis of Banksy's advertisement and these

question gave by lecturer. This post blog strike my mind and change my aspect in power of word.

High School Literacy Narrative In first assignment, this assignment was wrote about something in happened in the time when we were studying in high school. This work was training our ability to read and write, to construct physical sentences but also to construct knowledge in literacy. It was a completely a challenge for me in writing. First time, I had no idea how to write when I got this assignment. It is because When I was studying in high school, I have not any experience in wrote anything about story and narrative. This work did improve my critical thinking because after the first draft, I got a lot of suggestions and ideas from my classmates. It is not only in my grammar, but also they have a clear mind to analysis the main point of this assignment. I thought the reason was that I used to receive order to write when I was studying in high school. But now I have to be a real writer. As the writing environment changed, I have to grow up in writing. I have to change my mind in order to find more and more ideas and I have to take risk in my work because there was no special guide in this assignment, we could write what we want. The first draft and the second draft in this assignment was a highly changing in my own work. Remember the first draft I wrote, My last year high school life was hardship but it made me more mature. and in the second draft I wrote, My last year high school life was hardship and full of challenge. But it made me strong and became more mature. My life turned a new page because of my last high school experience The difference between two draft changed not too much but it did change my writing in sentence structure. It is because my writing was boring and less

attractive. Finally, I choose to write my experience of the college entry exam to be my high school literacy narrative. The result was good because most of classmates want to understand the difference between Asian and Western.

Midterm In midterm, I thought I have to write a essay in class. The midterm in English1101 is completely difference from other subjects. When the time lecturer mention about the midterm, I thought this midterm was easy. In fact, it has it own difficulty. The sentence I wrote in midterm was that "In that time, students do not need to think too much on writing, the only way to success is satisfy what teacher needs. I have never thought about the critical thinking and risk taking are important in writing.", it changed my mind in this course because I have to fact these key concepts and build up my writing skills and aspects. It is because the purpose of midterm was talking about what we faced in writing and it had to relate to key concept. Also, we had to explain the reason of that. When I tried to write the key concept, it was hard for me to tell readers about these key concept because the experience I earned from Asia is not writing our own essay. After I discussed with my classmates, they also faced this problem even they are native. In high school, we just need to satisfy the requirement from teachers and we never wrote what we wanted. But now I have to understand all the key concept, but there are some key concept that they are so abstract for me to explain, such as risk taking. Also, my writing style was shallow. I have to improve it. Recalling the memory in midterm I wrote that "Sometime when I got a great point of view, but it is hard to draw readers attraction." I learned the course requirement and the true meaning in

this course. The key concept were helping me to improve my writing. Some of the key concept are really hard to master and some of the key concept appeared spontaneously and I was not aware of them.

Genre study Unlike all the assignment we did in this course, this assignment was writing about the writing of high school and college and how they could reflect our writing. Also, we have to understand the genre in different writing style and usage. honestly, this assignment is the most challenging assignment in this course. It is because I have difficult in describe the genre in these writing, even I read all material that lecturer gave. But the feedback from classmates and the example from the previous students did help me a lot in this assignment. Some of my classmate ,she read my first draft and the sentence she wrote in my essay did encourage me to improve the idea. "explain how these sentences helping student to improve their writing?" she wrote. In this genre study, I learned genre that it can be a writing style and we could easy to understand the writing by determining the genre. But in the analysis part in this assignment, it is really hard to do. I felt afraid of making mistakes in this part. In that moment, I had to take a risk in my writing and tried to quote any sentences to support my writing from the reading material.

Work artifacts During my writing process, thinking and writing a draft is an important step. It is not just a process that write a blurred idea on the paper. It is building a bridge between my brain and my essay. It is well known that idea is abstract. Every time the idea emerge from my brain, I have to write it down because it is

easy to forget idea itself can be confuse with other ideas. After finished the draft, It is simple that put all ideas into essay. This method is good for my writing because it is good understanding the assignment and organize the structure to be reasonable. Feedback artifacts Before second draft, we share our essay. This is a good chance to find great idea from classmate's work. In each feedback session, great ideas always come from discussion. Also, through this discussion we can modify our essay and make it better. In high school literacy narrative, Son Huynh mentioned "what does HKAL affect your academic behavior and how HKAL advance your learning." It is good method to let me know the what is inadequate in my essay. In genre study, Mary Klemons pointed out "how the lab report reflect student in writing?" It made me orientate the focus on lab report and improve it. Writers Notebook artifacts Reader response letters is one of our assignments in English1101. After we read the text book, we have to write a RRL and share the letter to class. RRL is not only the summary of the chapter we read in the book, but also we have write what we learn in the book. Some of our classmates think the text book does not teach how to write. But it is wrong. As the text book include a lot of information, we can take it as a reference. Also, lecture selected some chapters from text book did help us to improve our thinking. For example, understanding writing assignments (chapter 14), It mentions about what is genre and how we use genre to write an essay. lecturer selected this chapter and we have to write a RRL to show what we learn in genre from text book. In result, it did help me in writing genre study. In addition, RRL is not just focus

on the text book. Remember the Henry Doss came to our class and share the idea of generation of leader. After this session, we have to write a RRL and share what we think and how Henry Doss's speech change our mind. In RRL, I wrote " In common, most of students are afraid of solve any problem by their self. People are longing for a new and powerful leader to help and guide them to solve the problem." It is because we always afraid to do something wrong. But this course we have to learn when we should take a risk and Henry Doss's speech did changed my aspect of the world.

Wild card This is a book report I wrote in this semester. As the genre study in English 1101 I learned, book report should be an essay that explain the idea of the book I read. In this book report, it is not just a summary of book but also it contributes to my writing. The most challenge part in book report is how writer explain and tell the idea of book in simple way and attract reader's curiosity to read the book. It challenges my critical thinking.

Key concept The key concept which challenged me all the time in this course were critical thinking, curiosity and risk-taking. They were surrounding in every assignments we did. They were the most difficulty to master in writing skills. When I met them in first time, I felt they were strange and hard to control in my writing. Unlike other students in class. My logic in language is not same as other students, it makes we had different aspect in same thing. In critical thinking, This influence my writing every time but I have not master it yet. It is because critical thinking was really hard to apply in different

assignments for me. For example, I have no idea to write my genre study in first time. My brain was dry up when thinking about the analysis part. The solution to solve this problem was that I tried to listen and ask my classmates for suggestion and idea in analysis part. Even they gave different methods and suggestion for me, but the concept they gave did help me a lot. The second is curiosity. The curiosity gave pressure to push me advance in writing. Some time I sat in front of reading desk and looked at the title of writing, There were a lot of ideas and suggestion appeared in my brain. The curiosity made me try to put these ideas together into the essay. But some time it could make me to the wrong paths. The last one is risk-taking. This element in my writing case me hard to decide what I had to write. honestly, I am a classic Asian student. It means I am afraid of defeat, but I tried in genre study. When I asked other classmates, they are dare to take the risk in stead of writing the essay normally. It could be the difference between Western and Asian.

My grade In every time I finished my work, I had a thinking about the grade of my assignment, especially in this time. It is because this assignment should be my last assignment in English1101. Every time I tried to grade my works and compare with classmate' works. I found that my works were not good enough. It is because I didn't do good in critical thinking and curiosity. This is the reason I never writing some special idea in my writing. Also remember and compare the writing between college and high school, the writing of high school affect me a lot because I think I used in formula writing. It was that put every information in formula and created writing. But I still tried to do my best in every work. In the end of this course, I hope I can get a B or better. It is

because I completed all the works on time, even some of the key concept I didn't good. I just kept learning all the time and tried to treat the writing like native users.