Final Portfolio

Final Portfolio
In English 112 this year, I believe I have worked hard enough to achieve an A. I can prove that I worked hard enough by displaying everything I have learned in English 112 and how I have improved my writing skills since English 111. I have only missed one English and History class this year so I have not missed the maximum amount until your letter grade drops. I have also turned in all my assignments in and on time. What I have learned and improved this year are the rhetorical knowledge, differences between primary and secondary sources and how to use them in P.E.A paragraphs, and group work, how to use the library to find primary and secondary sources and how to write a research paper.
In my first paragraph I will talk about how I have learned to use rhetorical knowledge in my paragraphs. Last year I learned that rhetorical knowledge was the study of how to accomplish your ends by using communications. I also learned about the rhetorical triangle of pathos, ethos, and logos (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2010/12/image-1.html). This year I used this triangle to help me get started and realize who I was writing my paper too. I used the triangle to determine that I am the author and have: agendas, goals, purposes, knowledge of what you’re writing about, and the conventions. You use these to create a message or craft which will be for a specific audience. The audience you will write for has specific expectations, and want to know how you will craft your message, the knowledge you have on the subject and what genre you will use (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2010/12/image-1.html). In history this year I had to write a paper and I used this philosophy to help me write it for both English and History and both professor‘s as my audiences. (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/02/final-draft.html). In this paper I know that Dr. Damyo and Dr. Brandon were my audiences and I had to craft a message to get a good grade in History, but also used: correct grammar, set up my paragraphs well, and used the writing process; to get a good grade in English. I knew that I need my P.E.A paragraphs to give sufficient evidence to support my comparisons in my paragraphs. So to support my message I used quotes from the primary sources to prove to Dr. Demayo what I was comparing between the two sources were true. I also used the typical three body paragraph format to write my paper to show that I could use the writing process to do my history paper. I did a pre-draft (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/02/rough-draft.html) because that’s what my English professor wanted to see and was expecting from me and it helped me write my final copy. In this paper I had two audiences and found ways to please both of them by doing what they wanted to see and having my facts straight. Last year towards the end of the year I had a pretty good concept on the rhetoric thing, but wasn’t as skilled in how to include it in my papers as I am now (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2010/12/final-exam.html). I know now that I have to use all my information to satisfy both teachers and my favorite way of doing it has become the P.E.A paragraphs (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2010/12/image-9.html). I think that the P.E.A paragraphs are the best way to explain you to the audience. You give the point, show the evidence, and then analyze it. It is such a simple, yet effective way of writing. I have used the P.E.A technique in this paper, my final exam from last year, and also my paper earlier this year in English (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2010/12/image-9.html) (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/02/final-draft.html). In each of these papers you can tell that I make my point’s first then use quotes or links to show evidence to support my points. After each of the quotes you can see that I have written an analysis for each piece of evidence to prove why I used that evidence to support my points. I think that the P.E.A evidence gives the author the best opportunity to craft a reasonable and respectable point to the audience. When the audience reads it they can see where the evidence is coming from to support your ideas and determine whether it is a trustful site. In my papers I have only used trustful sources to get my ethos up so the teacher can believe me when I make my points. The quotes I got where from the primary source book and the other sources are from notes from my teacher. Both of those sources I have used makes my ethos go up so it makes it easier for my audience to trust me making it easier for me, the author, to get a better grade.
In my second paragraph I will be talking about how I have learned to use primary and secondary sources. This year I learned the difference between primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are written documents, or a picture, or actually an object from the original time period. A secondary source is something that someone else writes about to explain the person, place, or thing that happened in history. In my first paper this year I had to write a paper comparing and contrasting two primary sources. I used the primary sources in my primary source book for history. We had to use the two primary sources from that book. I used note cards to get quotes from the primary sources to use as evidence in my P.E.A paragraphs (insert quotes link). In the link you can see the quotes in my note cards and how I documented each page and source I got them from. I wrote the page number in the top right corner. The author and the source I got the information from in the top left corner of the note card. The quote is in the middle of the note card. In the primary sources I got quotes to use as evidence to write the paper. (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/02/final-draft.html ) In this paper you can see that the bracketed areas are my sources. Each of those proves a point to my paragraph that is later followed by an analysis. So using my primary sources helped me write my P.E.A paragraphs as well.
In my third paragraph I am going to talk about one of the biggest additions to English 112 this year. That is group work. In English 111 we had groups, but most of the time we did work on our own. This year in English 112 most of the work and in-class work is with our groups. During class we sit in our groups. We now have an upcoming project where our group comes up with a topic, but then we write our own paper with the group. The new group idea actually has helped a lot this year. What has helped the most is the analysis of each others thesis sentences. This has helped in many ways. You can look at your group member’s thesis statements and you try to find ways to improve it. Now that we have focused so much on thesis statements this year this activity has improved my thesis statement writing a lot (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/02/thesis-statement.html#comments). In my thesis statement there you can read the comments of my group me members and I actually used their comments to come up with a better thesis statement in my final copy of my paper for history (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/02/final-draft.html). These new group exercises really help me out and everyone else out in the group. It makes writing papers a little bit easier with suggestions from outside readers. We also have a group three links posted on global learning community where we each wrote something about ourselves (http://globalconnectionslc.weebly.com/the-forum-s11.html). In the café I wrote something about myself to my other group members to explain why I am at J-sarge and what my goals are. Everyone else did the same and it was easier to get to know your classmates when you could go to the group cafes and read information about them. This really helped even more considering we do so many group activities this year. Also we had to post our history terms to our blogs(http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/03/british-east-india-empire.html) (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/03/caravel.html) (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/03/aztec-empire.html). Those are some of the terms I did and the rest are on my blog site. Each member of the group had a selected amount of terms and would have to find the who, what, when and why of each term. This really helps shoulder the work load and get good information for everyone to use on the history exam. The group activities have really helped out with me learning and getting work done.
The second half of the year the class mainly focused on the research paper. A new thing I learned by doing the research paper was how to use the library. In my first year at J-sarge the only time I went to the library was to find primary and secondary sources for my research paper. What helped me out a lot were the assignments you made us turn in that asked the questions about how to use the library and they showed you what to do. This made books a lot easier to find. I never knew how to even look up a book. Now I know I just have to go to the section, look at the side of the row and see what information is on the side of the sheet and know if that’s the info I want in that row. I also can use the computer to look up the keywords in books and that gives me the genre and ISBN number. Once I get that I go to the section and look up the ISBN and there is the book I need.
Finally the main thing we focused on the second year was our final research paper. This was our main focus because it was the only paper we had to write and Dr. Demayo and Dr. Brendon missed a few days due to sickness and that class Dr. Brandon was doing. In doing the research paper I learned how to use the library and how to incorporate my knowledge of primary and secondary sources to make my research paper. What we had to do was take a specific topic and use three secondary and one primary source to write about it. I did research on psychology and Germany for my research paper because our topic was Hitler’s psychological techniques on the Germans. In my research paper I used pictures as my primary sources to help explain past events that were going on (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/05/final-draft-research-paper.html) In the paper you can see the quotations I used to support evidence/ research to explain my points. Each point I used was some sort of psychological tactic that I found in one of the books. I then used the primary or secondary source to explain further on how he used that tactic and what it did. For instance I would use the psychological research books to explain the definition of the tactic in the psychological terms and then used the Nazi, Hitler books to explain how he used it and who he used it on (http://ryanjacoby.blogspot.com/2011/05/final-draft-research-paper.html). You can see in the first paragraph that I used selective antention as the psychological tactic Hitler was using. What I did next was get the definition from the book Psychology of Death. Then I showed examples of Hitler using it below with examples from the books Nazi Terror and Daily Life during the Holocaust. I used this tactic and the P.E.A paragraphs to write my history research paper and hopefully will get a good grade.
This year I haven’t learned a whole lot more of new information than last semester. What I have learned is how to incorporate that information into my paragraphs to improve my writing. For instance I have learned how to use rhetoric to whom that I am the author and have: agendas, goals, purposes, knowledge of what you’re writing about, and the conventions. You use these to create a message or craft which will be for a specific audience. The audiences you will write for has specific expectations, and want to know how you will craft your message, the knowledge you have on the subject and what genre you will use. Also I have learned the difference between primary and secondary sources and to use quotes to compare and contrast two primary sources. How to use the primary and secondary sources in a research paper. I even learned how to find the primary and secondary sources in the library. Group work has also been a big part of English 112 and helps everyone out in the groups with work. When you work together with groups it helps you get other opinions on your work to get the best ideas. Also you have others critiquing your work so you have someone looking over it before you turn it in for a final grade. It always nice to have someone else looks at your work because you never know what you might have missed or didn’t include.