SilfeePortfolioFinal

This semester, in Foundations of College Writing, we have constructed three projects that are meant to help us achieve five goals for our writing. The first project that we did was the CLUE project; a research project where we had to find other sources of information about a subject of college culture and then also do our own interviewing and collecting data to help prove our points as well as the points that we found in our research. The second project was the EAR project, in which we took the information that we found in the CLUE project and transformed it into different genres to convey the information to different audiences. In the final project, the TELL project, we wrote personal narratives about our own experiences or artifacts and related them to what it means to be educated in our own opinions. Below I will list the five goals of the class and explain how these three projects have helped me to achieve them.

In the research project that I did, I looked into what makes students want to come to college, or continue in college, as an accounting major. I wrote a research paper about the subject in order for other researchers to use, and in order to expand upon existing research. I achieved this in my paper by stating the problem, presenting previous research that had been done by other researchers, stating what I personally did to conduct my own studies on the subject,- interviews, observations, etc.. - then what my findings were after conducting these studies, and what my conclusions were about these findings. I did this for the CLUE project in order to show other researchers that I can use the research of others to conduct my own research tactics and analyze data appropriately. For the EAR project, the second project I constructed, I was trying to reach out to a different audience than in the CLUE project; incoming college freshman. In order to do this I decided to create a flyer that would easily catch the students' attention, hold it for a minute while they read it, and get the point across to them successfully. The purpose of the flyer is to get students to consider accounting before coming to college so that they know about it before they get into college-level classes. Because I was trying to reach out to a different kind of audience, and for a completely different reason, I needed to completely transform the project. In the CLUE project, I wrote about previous research done and how I used that to find my own answers to the problem, but for the EAR project I didn't need to write about these aspects of the original project. Instead I simply tried to get incoming freshman to consider accounting as a major. I know that most incoming freshman consider various major options before deciding what they want to study in college, so I used questions such as "Looking for a major?" "Are you good with numbers and business?" and "Have you tried accounting before college?" to get students to consider it before they get into college classes. By doing this, I showed that I am able to take the information from my CLUE project, which was meant to expand upon previous research for other researchers, and make it into something that would attract incoming freshman in order to get them interested in the accounting major before trying it in college.
 * __Goal A__****: Students will be able to compose for particular audiences and purposes.**

For my EAR project, which was a project in which I was to take information from the first project that I did and transform it into three different genres for three different audiences, I also constructed a letter that was from a university, such as Bloomsburg, to high schools around the nation in order to get them to get the word out about their accounting program and also what the profession has to offer students when they graduate after pursuing a degree in accounting. This letter was in the form of an e-mail or a memo and therefore had a heading with the date, who it was to, and a subject line. It also had a letterhead of the university that was sending it; in this case, Bloomsburg. Because it was a letter, it began with "Dear..." and ended with "Thank you so much for your time and consideration on this matter." The body of the letter was all about ways that the faculty and staff of high schools could get the word out about not only Bloomsburg's business programs, but also their own. For example, I suggested that they could put flyers up that said something like this: This letter contains a greeting and a closing, which are important for stating who the letter is to and who it is from, it contains a body that addresses the issue that the writer is writing about, it also contains a header that contains the date, the name of the person who is to receive the letter, and a subject line. All of these are conventions that are necessary for a letter to be considered a letter. The fact that I utilized all of these conventions in my letter from a University to high schools shows that I am very capable of achieving this goal.
 * __Goal B__****: Students will be able to compose using language and convention appropriate to genre.**
 * "Do you like working with numbers? Are you a fan of business? Well, you could and should find out before you go to college! Try taking an accounting course! Studies show that accounting majors tend to be more successful with it in college if they have taken it in high school and come into it with experience. Job availability and flexibility when you graduate are well worth your time! Accounting majors have a 99% placement rate when they graduate from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. In fact, a lot of the accounting majors that graduate from Bloomsburg have jobs lined up before they even graduate! This could be you! Talk to your guidance counselor today!"

In my CLUE project I used the research of others as a basis for gaining background information. I had to do research at the library to try to get this background information from other researchers' research. I looked things up online and found two sources that I thought would help me get really helpful information to prove my point. In order to get this information from the articles I found online I had to read both articles thoroughly and find the information that pertained to my project. Once I found all of the information I could use to help prove my point, I put it into the background section of my paper. I used facts that the other researchers had found such as: Both of these facts can be used to answer the question that was the basis of my whole project; what makes students choose to be, or continue to be, an accounting major? This shows that I am able to read through a text, whatever it may be, and select information that would be best fit to be used as background information in my own research. It also shows that I can, in fact, use the information that I've found to create a background information section in a research paper.
 * __Goal C__****: Students will be able to read, select, and use evidence critically to formulate and support** **arguments.**
 * "... they found that "students who took at least one high school accounting course were more likely to choose an accounting major," "high school guidance counselors also play a significant role," and finally that "students' experiences in their first college accounting course was a key factor in their decision to remain an accounting major," (Violette, 2012, pg 1)."
 * "In another article... it is said that students tend to decide to major in accounting when they either take it in high school, or during their first accounting course in college. However, "research indicates that many accounting students decide on their major during the first 2 years of college," (Mauldin, 2000, pg 142)."

For the EAR project, I was to take the information that I found in my CLUE project - which was a research project in which I found information that other researchers did and used it to perform my own research experiments and obtain my own findings - and transform it into three different genres for three different audiences. I created a flyer for incoming freshman, a letter from a university to high schools, and another flyer for a satire. I personally didn't compose in different media, just different genres, but I did learn how to compose in different media. Dr. Sherry showed us many different websites that we could use in our EAR projects to transform our CLUE projects information into different media as well as different genre. These included comic-making, book-making, and even video-making websites. However, I didn't chose to do any other kinds of media. These three examples show that I am able to successfully compose in a variety of print and non-print genres. I created a flyer for incoming freshman in order to capture their attention and get my point across before they were no longer interested, a letter for the high school faculty and staff because I knew they would read through the whole thing and it needed to be much more professional than the flyer because it was about business matters, and a table tent flyer for my satire so that it can be easily seen in any public setting, unlike a video, and would be contrasted from one side to the other. Throughout the course of this class we had to read, or watch, many different things. Sometimes we had to read an article, other times we had to read a short story, and sometimes it was even a book. Other times we had to watch videos. After we read or watched these media, we always had to write a response as to what it made us think and/or feel. @Silfee Reading Response 4 This is an example of a reading response on both an article that I read and a video that I watched for Foundations of College Writing. This example shows that I am able to read or watch different media and understand it in a way that allows me to be able to compose a response to that media. The other example shows that I am able to compose different genres; print and non-print.
 * __Goal D__****: Students will be able to interpret and compose in a variety of media and print /non-print genres.**

For every project that we did throughout the course of this semester in Foundations of College writing, we followed up with something called peer review. Peer review is when the class breaks off into small groups of usually three and discusses the work that they did in each of their projects. Each students takes their turn to present their project to the other two people in their group and, once they've finished, the other group members make comments about the work that was just presented to them. The group goes over what was good and what needed some work for each person's project, and then they go back and use the constructive criticism that they were given by their peers to better their work on their own. They retain the information that they were given by their peers by writing on a peer review form: After the group fills this sheet in with comments from the other students in the group on the front and their comments about the other works in the group on the back, they use something called a revision sheet to state what revisions they've made to their own work. This sheet has three columns on it: 1. Original (What you wrote) - the column in which students write what they had originally written and wanted to improve upon or even just get rid of 2. Revision (How it changed after feedback) - the column in which students write how and what they changed their original work to 3. Explanation/Rule (Catchy way to remember it next time) - the column in which students wrote why they needed to make this revision and also how they could remember not to do it on another assignment These columns allowed me to keep track of the revision I made to my projects and also remember these mistakes that I revised so that I didn't make them on other assignments. The first sheet allows for us to use the criticism that we received from our peers during peer review in order to better our own work. This shows that I am able to discuss writing processes with my peers and apply them to their work when I criticize it constructively. The second sheet allows us to keep track of how we used that criticism to better our work on our own. These two sheets together show that I am able to discuss appropriate writing processes and apply them to not only my work, but the work of others in order to help them improve their work.
 * __Goal E__****: Students will be able to discuss and apply appropriate writing processes both individually and in collaborative context.**