Portfolio_McNelis_Final_Draft

Foundations of Writing Dr. Sherry Portfolio Synthesis Letter Audrey McNelis This semester in Foundations of Writing, our class was assigned projects in which we had to achieve five separate goals. In this Portfolio I will demonstrate examples of some of those projects and I will also incorporate each goal to coincide with them. The projects that we did were intended to make us think beyond the ordinary and push our limits. The projects were designed to help us individually get a sense of what it means to be educated. The first project I did was based on college culture and the experiences of my peers, the second was to take that information and transform into three separate genres appropriate for different audiences, and the third was a personal experience that I portrayed in a narrative. In my research project I studied interracial interactions among different races, cultures, and ethnicities and why we don’t see these interactions often. I transformed my second project into a professional letter to a faculty member of Bloomsburg University regarding cultural awareness clubs. My purpose for this was to try and get those cultural awareness clubs more recognition and advertisement. I believe that if students knew more about these clubs and had more insight on what these clubs entailed it would interest them in joining and learning about the different races, cultures, and ethnicities of their peers, thus giving the university a more family oriented atmosphere. . “In today’s society, all different types of cultures, races, and ethnicities are surrounded by each other on a daily basis, but that does not mean we know anything about each other. As students of BU, we want to know more about who we are surrounded by, who we will be working with, who we will be having classes with and in some cases who we will be living with.” I incorporated this passage in my professional letter to a faculty member of BU to try and convey the importance of getting to know each other’s peers. I wrote this in a professional and structured format to show the seriousness of this matter. In my research project I studied why we do not see interracial interactions among people of different races, cultures, and ethnicities. I chose to write a paper using data and information that I collected. I transformed that information in a way the audience could understand. There were five conventional sections to my paper which consisted of the problem, background, method, findings, and conclusion. Below I am going to show you an excerpt from my paper taken from my findings section. I interviewed ten people that go to BU and I asked them each the same questions about racism and interracial interactions. The first question that I proposed to each one of my interviewees was, “Do you feel you are treated fairly?” Six people out of the ten answered yes to that question and the other four answered no. The second question I asked was, “Do you feel intimidated to approach or talk to people of different races, cultures, or ethnicities?” Out of these ten people 6 of them said yes and 4 of them said no. My follow up question was, “Why do you feel this way?” One of the answers I got was “because they are people that have a completely different background than us, we come from a different lifestyle”. Another answer I received was “I like to put myself in a position where I am comfortable, and getting to know someone who is completely different than me makes me feel out of my element” I chose to do interviews to try and get others outlook in this subject. I also did this so the audience could relate to what their peers had said. In my research paper I made the argument that it is extremely important to reach out, learn, and experience new things. I conveyed this by stressing the importance of educating ourselves about people of different races, cultures, and ethnicities. I also stressed this by talking about the future; hoping to give the audience an incentive to want to learn about others of different races, cultures, and ethnicities. I took an excerpt from the conclusion of my first project and posted it below.
 * Goal A. Students will be able to compose for particular audience and purposes. **
 * Goal B. Students will be able to compose using language and conventions appropriate to genre. **
 * Goal C. Students will able to read, select, and use evidence critically to formulate and support arguments. **

“People say college is a whole new experience but, are we really experiencing anything knew if we are not willing to reach out of our comfort zone? If we come to college and do the same things, hang out with same people and do not expand our horizons we will never get an experience we did not have before. College is all about becoming a well-rounded person. In the real world we are going to be exposed to different types of people on a day to day basis. We are going to have interact with these people, we are going to have to work with and hold conversations with people we know nothing about. Reaching out and putting ourselves into uncomfortable positions and educating ourselves about different types of people will in the long run benefit us.” This passage taken from my project was used to try and make the audience think about the future, and college experiences. I wanted the audience to questions the things they are doing and see how they can improve themselves, their experiences, and education.

In my research project I transformed my information into a flyer that would be appropriate for a specific genre. The audience I chose for the flyer I created was for students. In creating my flyer I used the CRAP principles which stands for contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. Contrast is the way the colors, font, size, and shape look when everything is put together, repetition is the repeating of specific colors, words, sentences etc., alignment is the way the sentences and words line up on your paper, and proximity is when certain items that belong together are grouped together in a certain area. I used each one of these principles to engage and capture the attention of the students. I chose this specific genre because it shows how the colors work together nicely, the font is big in certain areas to catch the attention of the audience, and certain important information is grouped together so the audience can find all the information at one time. After each project that we composed, we were to do a peer review. We brought a rough draft of our project in and gave it to our colleagues to evaluate. After each project we used the same peer review format that I am going to show below. This peer review sheet really helped us to understand what our own expectations were, expectations of our professor and gave us the opportunity to hear constructive criticism and learn what could be improved on. For example during peer reviews if a grammatical error was brought to my attention, I would write it down in the spot provided. When making revision to my project I could then look at my peer review sheet and see what improvements needed to be made.
 * Goal D. Students will be able to interpret and compose in a variety of media and print/non-print genres. **
 * Goal E. Students will be able to discuss appropriate writing processes both individually and in collaborative contexts. **