Veniamin Stupin

The Overall View

To whom it may concern:
Coming to English 5, I thought Im not going to get far or learn anything new about
reading and writing, but apparently throughout the course I have learned many new reading and
writing processes. Theres a plethora of things that I have learned throughout the course but some
of the topics that Im going to focus on are: my new and improved reading process, my writing
process, my research process, the process I went through to create each document in this
portfolio, my writing strengths and how they have developed over the course, my writing
weaknesses and how I can work on improving it, and lastly how I expect to use writing in my
major or as a professional in my degree.
At the beginning of the semester, my reading process was alright but it was not at the
level it is right now. As the course was ongoing I learned that there are different ways of reading
different sorts of writings. For example when reading an article by a person you know very well
and that person doesnt have much credibility, you might read the paper without any
acknowledgement of what the writer is trying to tell the reader. One of the goals during the year
was to help students understand the ways that readers read and writers write in and beyond the
university(course goal #1). When your reading a paper by a person that is very credible, you
change the way you read the paper and focus on the information that is given rather than
scrolling through it. Through this I learned that if the author is not credible, sometimes theres
really no point in reading their paper because they might have incorrect facts and statements in
their paper that might throw you off-track.

My writing process has prospered since the beginning of the semester. When I just came
to the class, I wasnt used to riding rough drafts and getting feedback on my writing assignments
other than the grades the teachers gave. In high school, there would be a rare chance for writing
workshops to actually happen so I never got used to it. In this class, the writing workshops
helped me improve my writing by showing me what I was doing wrong and how I could
improve. It gave me new ideas and allowed me to edit in those new ideas into my paper. To help
students understand textual conventions (that is, genre conventions and citation style
conventions) Through the workshops, it allowed me to under new textual conventions and
how different papers are written. My outlining, organization, and drafting improved too. I
actually started making outlines for my essays and research papers to look back at. For example,
in the Environmental Science class I had to write a research paper. Before beginning the paper, I
wrote down couple questions and asked people for questions based on the topic I had. This
helped me focus on a certain idea and organize my paper a certain way for myself to get a good
grade on it.
My research process has improved greatly. Before coming to this class I used to use
google.com to find things for my research and that was quite hard to do because there were many
sources that were not credible so it was hard to get good facts out of them. Another professor told
me about scholar.google.com and in this class I found out that you can go onto the school library
to find certain books which helped me. The second goal of the class To help students understand
processes of reading, writing, and research was achieved through this class and allowed me to
acknowledge that there are many different ways of writing, reading and researching. These two
things allowed me to find credible books and articles that would support or go against a topic I

was researching. So basically my research process went from clicking first links on google.com
to finding good credible sources that actually helped me research on the topic.
To create the final portfolio draft, I had to write multiple papers to completely fulfill the
draft. This included the writers narrative, rhetorical analysis, and the research project.
Throughout the assignments, I was organizing, outlining, drafting, revising, getting peer
feedback, and then editing the papers to create the final portfolio draft. First I began the writers
narrative where I wrote about a paper I wrote back in 11th grade of high school and the long great
journey the paper went through. How the paper went from scratch to an A through hard work,
ideas, and a lot of revising. The rhetorical analysis is written based on a speech by President
Putin of Russia where he talked about bad decisions that were being made. Goal six mentions
this by saying To help students think critically about discourse communities as contact zones
where different cultures both connect and come into conflict. Lastly, the research project
consists of multiple things some of which is the annotated bibliography and final research
proposal. Personally the annotated bibliography takes a long time because that is the time where
you actually do the research and find credible sources to support or object against the claim that
is being made in the paper. These assignments allowed me to reach the third goal, To help
students develop a metacognitive understanding of processes of reading, writing, and thinking.
Writing these papers and working on them throughout the semester, I achieved that goal and
learned more about how certain papers are written and how they should be read. This allowed to
me to put new thoughts and ideas into the essays when I was revising them. There were also 8
dialectical journals that also lead and provided guidance on writing the major papers. The DJs
allowed me to warm up before writing the big essay and research papers.

My writing strength has went from a short 500 word essay to an easy 1000 in a short
period of time. As I talked about in my writing process, the essays, dialectical journals, annotated
bibliographies, and research paper all helped me improve my writing but mainly it was the
dialectical journals that allowed me to improve the most in writing. These assignments were
short so I was used to writing those types of short responses but the effort I put into them
changed over period of time. My first couple DJs were a check (-) which means that it wasnt
such a great response and could use some work. After a couple more revising and editing on the
other DJs I began to get just get the check mark which means that it was average but then
towards the end, my DJ grades began to be check (+) which means it was a great response. I feel
that through this I have improved my way of writing and it allowed me write longer better papers
throughout the semester.
My writing weakness is not setting certain goals that help me achieve the writing level I
need to have. If I set a goal or a certain time limit on when something is due, for example if I say
that I need to have the paper finished by 3 p.m. I should be able to be done by that time without
going overtime. This would prepare me to be ready for any writing assignment and any due date
that would face me in the future. Another weakness is using the word I to many times in the
papers even though that word is not supposed to be used in the paper. I need to personally work
on it and make sure of what I write and revise my papers to have a better view of what I have
written.
My current major that I am working on is computer engineering. I feel as there would be
a lot of writing to be expected in this major because you always have to write up project reports
on anything that you work on. These project reports require a lot of effort and writing to be put
into them because without the reports the bosses or managers wouldnt know what was done and

what still needs to be done. This leads into the fifth goal of the class, To help students
understand and engage in reading and writing as communal processes (other than peer
workshops) Through the degree that I am working towards, this goal will help me connect
my reading, writing, and thinking into communication methods such as letters, emails, and face
to face communication. Currently in my CPE 64 class, we work on labs and then write reports on
what we did and how we made certain circuit or program start working. The reports are usually a
couple pages long based on the project that is being worked on but writing does have a big factor
in the engineering field because that is a means of communication and without it there could be a
big problem of keeping track of everything that is going on.
This semester in English 5 has improved my reading, writing, and research progress so
much. It set me on a whole new level. This course allowed me to see what I was doing wrong in
the process of writing, reading, and researching and helped me be prepared for the thinking,
writing, revising, and editing/ proofreading that is required of me as a university student. My
new and improved reading process, my writing process, my research process, the process I went
through to create each document in this portfolio, my writing strengths and how they have
developed over the course, my writing weaknesses and how I can work on improving it, and
lastly how I expect to use writing in my major or as a professional in my degree. All these things
were discussed in his letter but there is always room for improvement so I shall move on and
learn more things as I go on with my journey to earning my computer engineering degree and
one day getting a job that pays off.
Sincerely,
Veniamin Stupin