Michael's Writing Portfolio

This is Michael’s Writing Portfolio. I am Michael, a sophomore majoring in World Economics at Fudan University. In this semester, I enroll in the course “Advanced Writing Class” taught by Ron Corio. We have an assignment of creating a writing portfolio as a blog on the website which is comprised of our writing articles during the course. With great pleasure, I will briefly introduce each part of my writing portfolio to you.

The first part is my essay portfolio which includes three drafts of the same essay I have wrote. You can see how I got started on this assignment and can trace the various stages of thinking and writing and rewriting I went through to produce my final essay. To me, this is a totally new method I have ever used to write an English article. But during this process I find it both interesting and rewarding.

When I initiated conceiving the first draft, I choosed to write about my favourite story in the book—The Necklace, written by Guy de Maupassant. I focused on the relationship between the necklace and the heroine’s character and fate. My thesis is that the necklace causes the heroine’s hard life but it contibutes to build up her own dignity. Then Ron asked us to form a study group of 2~3 students to do some peer review works. We read essays of other students in each group and gave each other advises. My partner told me that I should arrange my essay in a clear order and try to dig up a deeper meaning of the symbolism of the necklace. So in the second draft, I rearranged my essay by using some guiding sentences in the paragraphs. I also elevated the sgnificance of the heroine’s dignity up to the potential merits of the whole lower-class people. At last, Ron gave me some revising comments in words, quotations and paraphrasing. With a further revision by myself, I eventually produced the final draft of my essay.

The second part is the “Final Time-writing”, which is written about a given topic in a limited 45 minutes during our class. We have this practice for three times this semester and I believe it to be a precious opportunity to proof-test our writing skills.

The final part is a reading log about a story I have read, “The Americanization of Shadrach Cohen”. We have wrote four reading logs in all and I choose this one because it best represents my feelings about the story.

In the end, I want to thank my teacher, Ron Corio, who has spared great patience and a lot of time and energy to give us instructive comments in our process of writing and learning. I also appreciate my peer classmates very much because they have offered valuable suggestions to me and help me complete my final essay. I am sure I have gained a lot from this course and I will continue to practise writing industriously so as to achieve a greater improvement.