My name is Danielle Comparette and this is my portfolio for my Intermediate Writing class that I took in the Spring of 2009. I am an Adolescent/ Young Adult Integrated Language Arts major at Bowling Green University where I am a Junior.  The purpose of this portfolio is to showcase the six projects I completed in this class during the semester, as well as to show my progress and improvements that I made in my writing.

The theme of this class was “Exploring Multiple Literacies.” Although coming into this class I thought the term literacy only referred to acts of reading and writing, I left the class with a deeper understanding of what the word literacy actually refers to.  My new definition of literacy involves a person’s ability to communicate in society through various forms of communication. This could include anything from reading a magazine to text messaging a friend. I now see that everyone is surrounded with literacies in their daily lives.

My projects, as you will see, include aspects of the many different literacies I possess including: reading writing, blogging, other technological skills, personal literacies, and professional literacies. All of the six projects we completed this semester incorporated at least one of these aspects of literacy. My favorite project was my personal literacy narrative because I got to share with my audience the story of how I learned to read. This story can be found under the Unit 1 tab. The most helpful Unit for me was Unit 3, which dealt with professional literacies. In these two projects I was able to look ahead to my future by creating a resume and cover letter and also by exploring my lesson plan literacy. Finally, Unit 2 was very helpful to me as it allowed me to learn more about technology and how it applies to literacy.

Although we were required to complete six projects this semester, we were also allowed to revise two of our projects. This opportunity permitted me to polish my papers and make them even stronger. I have learned that revising a paper does not have to men ripping it apart and starting from scratch. Revision can simply mean re-seeing a project in a new light and making changes in the project in order to clear up any confusion the reader might have had the first time.  My two revisions are also included in this portfolio as well. You will find one under Unit 1 and the other under Unit 2. I also chose to showcase the original of both of these two projects so my reader can compare the two documents and see that revising really does help.

I hope that you will take a few minutes to look around this portfolio and view some of the different papers and projects that you find. By the time you are finished maybe you will have a new definition of literacy too!