English Department

Cal State Northridge

18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge, CA 91330

December 13, 2019

Dear Professor Kane:

In this portfolio, you will see my growth as a writer and my strengths throughout my first

semester as a college student. You will see my final draft of essay one, followed by its first draft,

my best blog post, and finally my best progression exercise (give titles).

I feel like when it comes to writing essays, I am slightly above average. Others tell me I

have very good essay writing skills, however, I personally think I still have room for improval.

When It comes to essays I feel like my strongest point would be my thesis. I feel as if my theses

are always to the point and effectively present my ideas to the reader. Additionally, I have good

organization when it comes to my essays. I am able to split up my arguments and ideas in

different paragraphs in a way where it flows smoothly and each argument builds off of the other.

This is very useful, since it makes the entire essay more fluid and makes my thesis look stronger

since the arguments supporting it are all growing in quality and information. I also feel like my

supporting arguments are one of my strengths, since I am able to analyze pieces of evidence and

connect them to my thesis further justifying and backing up my reliability as an author.

I feel like I need more help in my grammar and mechanics when it comes to writing

essays. I feel like all of the good ideas are there, but since I do not have a very advanced

vocabulary, it brings down the quality of my essays. Also, this is seen when analyzing pieces of

evidence in my essays, since they start to feel repetitive since my vocabulary is not that diverse
making the paper be somewhat boring as well. To fix this, I try to use thesaurus a lot and have

my family friend go over my essays and give me a few pointers that I can use while editing my

essay. In the future, I want to visit the LRC more often so I can get a third opinion on my essays

helping me see problems in my writing that a friend may not notice.

To my future self, I want you to never forget to use good pieces of evidence to support

your thesis, since an unreliable source or a weak quote can really ruin the strength of your

reliability and the success of your paper. In this semester, I also learned the importance of

grammar and realized that there had been so many mistakes I had been making when it came to

the placement of commas, use of conjunctions, and even some spelling errors along the way. I

want my future self to remember the minor grammatical errors I made and to work hard to avoid

repeating them. For the incoming students to the English 115 class next semester, I recommend

that you revise your essays more than just once. This helps you see so many mistakes you had

that you did not realize you made when writing it. When writing essays, most people feel like

they are just done since they just completed the assignment, however, you do not fully complete

the assignment if it is not to the best of your abilities. To fully complete an assignment you

would need to have a peer edit your essay since others will see errors that you are blind to since

it is your own writing. Besides having a peer edit it, you should go over it once more before

creating your final draft just to make sure you are proud of your work completely happy with it.

This will really help you grow as a writer, and it will help you have a better grade when it comes

to writing essays. I really hope you enjoy my portfolio.

Sincerely,

Mary Sargsyan