Portfolio Letter to EVERYONE

Dear Reader,
This half-year in college composition has been a very enlightening experience for both my writing and my mind set for when I write. At the beginning of this course, I knew that I wasn't a very good writer but I considered myself a decent one who could pretty much wing an essay and get a relatively good grade on it ranging from a B to an A depending on how involved I was with the topic. Throughout my first few days in college composition I realized that I was writing completely wrong and that winging an easy was the worst writing technique that I could ever use. I learned that there are so many different techniques of writing that I could use I don't know why I have never used them before. Now that I have completed this class I don't know if I could wing an essay even if I tried because I have tried to incorporate so many of these writing techniques into my writing that it has become a habit. I have grown very much as a writer while taking this class not only through how good my writing is but by how I write and plan my pieces. The greatest stride I think I've made throughout the entire class is trying to get the reader involved with what I am trying to say and really connecting with the reader. At first in my pieces, I almost just laid the piece in front of the reader and there was no emotion with what I was trying to say but now I fell that I can really connect with the reader through my writing. The best example of this progress in my writing is the celebrity paper where I try to connect with the reader so that they know how much I really love Taylor Swift.
My first blog is the 7 Deadly Sins Conclusions post. This post is a way that I could revise my 7 Deadly Sins paper to be better and we decided to take it piece by piece. In this post, I chose 3 different types of techniques to write a conclusion and wrote a brand new conclusion to the 7 Deadly Sins paper for each different technique. In doing this I could examine each one and if I were to write the paper all over again, I would have 3 better conclusion to choose from that I could replace the original with.
The next post that I have is the Revision of the Celebrity Paper. In this post I chose a piece that I would like to be revised and asked Mrs. Basko for feedback on 3 flaws that I found in my essay so that I could improve the essay if I were to revise it. Within a few days, she commented on the post with feedback on what I requested and it was very insightful for what I should do if I were to write another essay similar to this one. While reading her feedback, I learned that a paper can get its point across with just dialogue and when it calls for it, there is no such thing as too much dialogue. I never realized this before and I believe that I can really use that lesson when writing future papers.
The next post is the How-To Paper. In this paper, my group and I wrote a piece with directions on what to do in order to successfully hand in homework late and get credit. In this post I criticized the piece and noted what needed to be fixed on the paper. This was the first paper that I had ever written directly giving the reader directions on what to do in order to do something so obviously there were some serious flaws in the piece.
The next post on my blog is the Revision of 7 Deadly Sins Paper Post 2. In this post, I revised my 7 Deadly Sins paper as best as I could at the time. Unfortunately, as stated in the blog, I couldn't really do too much because I was very unclear with what to do when I came to fixing transitions. One revision that I was able to do however, was attempt to fix my conclusion. This was before I wrote 3 brand new conclusions so what I did to revise it was add an extra sentence to it that summed up the piece and didn't leave the reader hanging.
The next post on the blog is the Revision of 7 Deadly Sins. In this post, I had just read my 7 Deadly Sins paper for the first time since handing it in and I was making revisions on it. I basically just posted everything that I thought needed to be fixed in the paper if I were to revise it and it really came in handy when I actually did revise the paper. What I learned when writing this post is that you can always revise a paper no matter how good you think it is because there is no such thing as a perfect paper.
The next post is the Introductions to the Cookie Essay. In this post I wrote 3 new introductions to my food paper using 3 different techniques of writing introductions that we learned in class. As it turned out, I believe that all 3 of the new introductions that I wrote using the new techniques was better than my first introduction that I wrote in the original paper. While writing this post, I learned that if you wish to revise a paper, revising it piece by piece can be a very effective way to make a paper better.
The last paper I wrote was the Food Paper. In this post, I wrote about what I needed to know in order to draft and organize this paper. I wrote about the challenges and easiest part of writing the paper and I basically wrote about my experience while writing the piece. While writing this post, I learned that if you wish to revise a paper, try to explain to yourself what was the hardest for you and that is probably what you need to revise the most.
I really hope that you like all of the posts that I have written in this blog and writing them was a great experience. Through college composition, I feel that I have become a much more advanced writing and I think that all of my future essay will be greatly influenced by what I learned in this class. I would also like to thank Mrs. Basko for teaching me so much in a half of a year and what she taught me will help me with my essay for the rest of my life!
Your Blogtastic Blogger,
Matt