WRT 114 / Unit 5 Assignment: Final Portfolio

 Your final project for WRT 114, due  Jan.23, should contain 20-25 pp. of your best/revised writing for this course, including at least one global revision piece, and an introduction.  Please arrange the contents of your portfolio as follows:

• Title page
• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Polished work in the order of your choice (please mark revision piece accordingly)
• Previous version of revision piece with my comments ( circled areas in the rubric)

Your final portfolio is worth 15% of your overall grade for the course.  However, if I note a substantial improvement in the total quality of your work across the body of the portfolio, I will credit your overall course grade accordingly.

If you received an A on a previous essay, I strongly encourage you to include it in the final portfolio, but I still expect you to revise the writing as needed, even in subtle ways, to develop the piece to its fullest potential.  There are no length restrictions on individual essays in this final portfolio.  If you wish, you may include a new essay, but I do not expect you to do so.

Global Revision

Your portfolio should include at least 1 substantially revised essay, which we’ll workshop in class during the last week and half of the course.  I’d like you to provide both the original with my comments, and the revised version (the original does not count as part of your 20 pp).  I want to emphasize that a “substantial revision” means substantial.  I don’t just want to see minor “tweaks” at the sentence level, although I am interested in sentence-level revision work.  But don’t stop there!  Select key passages that need to be reworked.  Consider how you can reshape your essay to make it stronger.  Figure out which parts need to be clipped, added, and rearranged.  Add in new writing and concrete details where needed.  Work to fill in the gaps and draw out important meanings and narrative strands.  Write new scenes.  Figure out how to begin the essay and how to end it.  Consider your purpose in writing this essay and locate ways of strengthening your pact with the reader.  Make your sentences pretty, poetic, and concise.  Eliminate unnecessary words, and replace words that aren’t very interesting or precise with words that have more power and precision.  Your final revision piece may be any length you wish.

Introduction

It’ll be up to you to decide how long your introduction needs to be.  You may use the tools of creative nonfiction—or be as creative as you wish—in beginning.  I would like your introduction to include a serious analytical reflection on the work you’ve done so far in this course, discuss the progress you’ve made as a CNF writer, what you’ve discovered about your interests as a writer, what you find yourself focusing on as you compile the final portfolio, the ethical standards you’ve sought to establish and uphold in this collection of writing, and any other relevant connections or insights (thematic, imagistic, etc.).  Your introduction should also engage with at least one craft or content reading assigned this semester.  Discuss how this reading sheds light on your creative work.

Cover page, title, and table of contents

Although not required, feel free to design a cover for your portfolio.  Be as creative as you wish!  I would like you to include a table of contents, and order your work as you wish.  Try giving your portfolio a title that reflects or introduces the work in some way.  Titles are challenging.  You might consider searching your essays for language that could be excerpted to serve as the title, or consider images or ideas that weave their way through your portfolio.  Alternatively, you could use one of your essay titles as the portfolio title.