Taryn Green

English 2010- 1 PM
May 2, 2015
Reflective Essay
The course goals for this class were pretty straightforward to achieve. By writing a
variety of essays and in multiple genres, I feel I was able to adapt strategies for argumentation to
match a given writing situation. With the peer review process, it became easier to revise a paper
many different times until the paper achieved a finalized gloss. This helped me to achieve the
goal of conceive, draft, and revise many kinds of documents, and manage these processes
independently. I feel that my greatest strength in this class is citing sources correctly and
presenting a well-researched paper. An area I feel I need to improve is time management. I tend
to put off an assignment until I am stressed crying and staying up late trying to finish it.
While using the peer review comments, I found that suggestions and corrections were
most helpful, verses criticism. Having peers read my papers and offer up suggestions helped me
improve my writing by pointing out any grammatical errors I made. In my Position/Proposal
Essay, one of the suggestions used was that I mentioned the opposing side to my argument, so in
turn, I added more arguments and I counter-argued the arguments that I added. A few suggestions
that I made for my peers were image usage, source citation, and additional sides to an issue. With
image usage, I usually just needed to suggest a caption or the use of a different image. Generally,
sources werent introduced, or the source didnt offer relevant information. Generally, an issue I
read about needed additional information, so I would suggest another side or argument to offer
more information about the issue. My greatest strength as a peer reviewer would be my objective
suggestions on the pieces I am presented with. I realize that I did not go through the same

amount of research on their topic, so I dont suggest that they omit citations. I try to offer
suggestions as a reader, and offer ways for their paper to be clear as a reader. While working on
peer reviews, it helped improved my own writing by offering corrections on my peers papers.
The corrections allowed me to notice mistakes I had been making in my own papers.
As I was revising my papers to prepare for this ePortfolio, I decided to focus on them
chronologically so I could make sure all papers were revised. In the first essay, the issue
exploration, I removed the second paragraph (while), and moved it into the regulation section
of my paper. On the third and fourth page, I added a clear topic sentence introducing regulations
and free range farming, and allowed my voice to be stronger. Lastly, on page six, I revised the
paragraphs surrounding my quote about animal rights so the quote made more sense. I also
revised the concluding paragraph so it better tied together my paper.
The second essay, the position-proposal, I first started my revision on page three. I added
a because to allow my thesis to be clearer. On page four, I allowed my argument to become
more obvious as well as remove the logical fallacy in the last paragraph of that section. On the
same page, I split up each argument so I could counter-argue them effectively. On page six, I
fixed a previous sentence fragment. In the last paragraph before my conclusion, I addressed to
questions that I did not originally foresee which were how will free range farming produce
enough food and how will I get the word out about free range farming. In my conclusion on
pages six and seven, I expanded it so it tied together both my position and proposal sections of
this essay.
In the rhetorical situation portfolio, I started with the cover letter to begin my revision
process. I started by fixing outstanding grammatical errors and then I expanded on my reasons
behind my rhetorical situations instead of listing them, which I had done recently. In my letter to

a public official, I stroked the ego with adding stronger pathos to convince him for change
after I presented facts. Finally, in the memoir, I added smaller details to allow the story to flow
better while providing better insights to the personal situation.
Overall, working on this portfolio has improved my writing skills because of the many
revisions and genres I had to write. I learned a lot in this class, and even though I became
completely stressed out and overwhelmed at points, I am glad that I was able to take this class.