Portfolio

(SCROLL DOWN FOR REFLECTIVE LETTER AND CHAPBOOK ASSIGNMENTS)

5 pts. possible, 5% of Grade

Due: no later than 4:30 pm, Friday, May 11th.
If I'm not in my office, you can simply slip your portfolio under the door, or put in my mailbox in the main English Office, Minard 318.

Contents of Portfolio

    1. A title page
    2. A table of contents
    3. A reflective letter
    4. A selection of your cyberwork assignments with a clear header and stapled together, as-needed for neatness.
    5. Your contemplative journal with a clear header and stapled together, as-needed for neatness.
    6. Your chapbook

How to Hand in Your Portfolio

    Enclose all of your materials neatly in a manila envelope. Lightly pencil your name, class name, and class day (Tues. or Thurs.) on the front. Do not seal.

    Hand in no later than 4:30 pm, May 11th.

NOTE!

ALL material must be proofread for clarity, concision, and mechanical correctness.

Purpose

This portfolio will give both you, me, and the English dept. program assessors a good sense of what you've done this semester. Portfolio scoringis primarily for "presentation," which means neatness, orderliness, and overall professional appearance and visual appeal.

The reflective letter, chapbook, and poetry projects will be scored individually.

Evaluation Criteria

The portfolio must heed all instructions above and contain the items listed. Each item is clearly labeled, and each group of items is stapled or clipped as needed for neatness. All work is carefully edited and proofread. All materials are enclosed in a manilla envelope, with your name, course name, and course day lightly penciled on the outside.

A = 5 pts. Outstanding; meets all criteria with distinction.

B = 4 pts. Good; meets all criteria, or meets one or two rather weakly but some with distinction.

C = 3 pts. Fair; meets most criteria; may barely meet one or two while doing competently with others.

D = 2 pts. Poor; meets few criteria; receives a passing score because it does fulfill at least a couple key criteria.

The Reflective Letter

10 pts. possible; 10% of grade

This will be 2-3 page reflective letter in standard business letter format, addressed to the Department of English Upper Division Writing Assessors. Your letter should do the following:

    • Help the assessors understand what you've written for English 323 and what you've learned.
    • Discuss your workshop experience: summarize the feedback you received during your workshop sessions, explain what you learned about the strengths and weaknesses of your writing, explain how you revised the work in question (based on the feedback you received), and what directions for future work came out of the workshop sessions. Put your thoughts into the larger context of your overall progress and development as a writer.Discuss the various cyberwork pieces you completed, as well as any hoodoo flapdoodle or in-class exercises.
    • Discuss the all-important chapbook—what you learned by putting your work together into a focused whole and viewing it as a book.
    • For all materials, be sure your paragraphs are developed and focused, your sentences edited and proofread for lapses in clarity, style, and mechanics.
    • The purpose of the letter is to help you think about and best use your work for this course. The purpose is also to show that you were engaged with course activities and assignments. The letter should demonstrate your commitment to improvement, help me to evaluate your progress and seriousness as a writer, and help the people assessing our program to understand what we accomplished.

Evaluation Criteria

A = 10 Outstanding; meets all criteria with distinction.

B = 9 Good; meets all criteria, or meets one or two rather weakly but some with distinction.

C = 8 Fair; meets most criteria; may barely meet one or two while doing competently with others.

D = 6-7 Poor; meets few criteria; receives a passing score because it does fulfill at least a couple key criteria.

Your Chapbook

20 pts. possible; 20% of grade

Length requirement: minimum of 15 pages, counting reflective essay. This length requirement is not carved in stone, but please do your best to meet the minimum.

NOTE: I cannot return chapbooks; they will be used for UDW assessment purposes. If you want written feedback, email me a request and I will send it to you.

A chapbook is like a regular book, but shorter in length, less expensively produced, and self-published. At the end of the term, you will have a chapbook made up of your projects and any additional material you've produced, compiled to make a unified and readable collection.

Your chapbook materials should have undergone thoughtful and active revision, taking into consideration, as much as time permits, feedback from your teacher and classmates.

Your chapbook should have all of the usual conventions of any book: a title which engages the reader and contributes to the whole; a table of contents; a dedication page (optional), and a page of acknowledgements and sources, if needed. Include pagination.

Please write "Fiction Project" and Poetry Project #1 (or #2 or #3) in pencil, lightly at the top of these items in your chapbook. You don’t want them to look like school projects—they should look like items in your book. The penciled headers are only for scoring purposes

You're free and encouraged to include other work you've done during the semester, if you think it would help fill out the book, give it unity, etc. If you're very interested in a kind of writing I haven't assigned, and/or are actively engaged in a project of your own, feel free to run it by me. OR: if one or more of your projects don't work to your satisfaction, you may substitute them with alternatives (but NOT work from some previous class). I'll try, as much as possible, to tailor the course to suit your interests. The fundamental requirements and criteria will remain the same for most assignments, but we can probably allow for some flexibility.


NOTE: your chapbook must steer clear of sentimentality, triteness, and commercial formulas (unless you are innovating on a formula). No cheesy, floral fonts (unless for ironic effect), no topics having to do with teddy bears, and no pictures of such things as bunnies or flowers (unless, again, for ironic or some other non-sentimental effect). "Sentimentality" as used in discussions of literature means a failure of imagination. 

Design

You should have your chapbook bound by a printer on campus or in the F/M area. You will be shown models in class. You may be able to produce this yourself using Word Publisher or similar software.
 

Overall Audience and Purpose

We're aiming in this class to produce interesting work for any avid reader of quality fiction and poetry. Assume your audience is well-read in both literature and the arts, likes to be surprised by new perspectives and fresh language, and also wants to be moved. (I.e., blow their hair back!) Your audience for these project is not especially interested in formulaic writing of any kind, nor anything intended primarily for the commercial mass market. Your purpose is to move and provoke your reader, and to demonstrate what you've learned about writing poetry and fiction.

Evaluation Criteria

Your chapbook should heed all of the above. Be sure as well to carefully edit and proofread your work for surface errors (mechanical and grammatical). "No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place" (Isaac Babel, qtd. by Carver, "In Writing").

Chapbook Grade Scale

A = 18-20
B = 15-17
C = 12-14
D = 9-11


A = Outstanding. Meets all of the stated criteria and instructions with distinction. Excels in inventiveness, originality, and energy, realitve to work produced generally in 323. Well-edited and proofed. Publishable with a bit more work.

B = Very good. Meets all of the stated criteria and instructions, or meets several of them with distinction, despite a weak performance with others.. May be especially striking in spots, despite noticeable flaws. Very competent, but may lack originality or inventiveness, relative to work produced generally in 323. Good attention to style and mechanics. Clear attention to assignment.

C = Fair. Meets some of the stated criteria, or meets all of them only partially. Uninspired but minimally competent; or very inspired but lacking competence in key areas.. May show some inattention to, or misunderstanding of, instructions. Weak proofreading and editing.

D = Poor. Meets few of the criteria. May not not heed or understand instructions. May be sloppy, unproofed, unedited, and/or very perfunctory and uninspired.. An ineffective story, saved by at least minimal attention to at least one facet of the story.

 

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