Midterm Portfolio **EXAMPLE**

In the past eight weeks, my ENG 043 class has covered how to write a paragraph and has begun to take that skill and move it into composing a coherent essay. While we still have work to do before I feel truly comfortable writing an essay for a college class, I do feel that I have made improvement in my writing. Looking back at my first blog post, even I have a hard time following what I was saying. Although I know that I was attempting to introduce myself, it seems like I was putting everything I could think of into that paragraph and not really making decisions as to what was relevant and what was not. This is evident in the rambling nature of my post entitled "Introduction" from January 20, 2012. However, as we spent time in class discussing how to focus our ideas and how to cull through our ideas to only include the relevant details in our paragraphs, my writing demonstrates that improvement. My blog post from February 14, entitled "Looking Outside" shows marked improvement in this arena. While there may be a moment or two where I seem to go off track in the middle of the paragraph, I do feel that this text is a good indication of improvement in my writing. This is further evidenced by the most recent work I have done for this class. My introductory paragraph to the first essay, attached below, demonstrates a clear and focused paragraph. I may still be having trouble writing an essay at this point, but I now feel more confident putting together a strong paragraph and focusing my thoughts in that paragraph around a main idea.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Introductory Paragraph:

[sample paragraph - introduction to example/illustrative essay]