Hi! Welcome to my portfolio for English 131!

In this class I learnt how to improve my composition skills, throughout the course of the quarter I completed various assignments each with a focus on one or more targeted outcomes of this class. My class was entered around incarceration and so in addition to improving my composition skills, this class was also like an eye opener in terms of expanding my knowledge of one of the lesser discussed topics in society, incarceration and the underlying truths and assumptions to its functioning. 

Through this class, I saw incarceration from a different and often ignored perspectives. These perspectives was those of minorities, oppressed groups and those who are not the ones yielding power. My main takeaway from this class has been that the prison industrial complex has heavily flawed and has completely failed to achieve its purpose, I now realize that the truth was hidden behind a smokescreen all along and the prison industrial complex is more like a tool used by those in power to the ‘unwanted’ or ‘unworthy’ separate from society and not really ‘help’ those who committed a crime to become a better person.  This realization came after reading the work of various people who spoke against prison and came under the umbrella of ‘prison abolitionists’.

In my portfolio, I will be presenting various pieces I composed during the course of this class wherein in addition to aiming to achieve the outcome required, I reflect upon how has learning so much more about the prison industrial complex changed the way I think about it. 

In this portfolio, the next four sections are dedicated to one outcome each, in each outcome I reflect upon the outcome and present an assignment I revised to better achieve the outcome. Following the four outcomes, I present a final reflection wherein I reflect on the class as a whole and talk about the stakes of my work- why does it matter and who is it important to. Finally in the  compendium section, I will be presenting the original drafts of all the short assignments and major papers I completed in this class. 

 The first outcome of this class focuses on composing for a specific audience. To show mastery in this outcome I will be revising short assignment 3, a research proposal. I chose this piece because this was intended to be written for a very specific audience- academicians- and I feel that I could improve my work to help it better target the audience that was intended. So, I will revise this assignment while keeping rhetoric, tone, syntax and other elements of a text in mind to better address the specific conventions when writing for a given audience.

For the second outcome, I will be revising short assignment 2. The second outcome mainly related to the use of sources in wiring. I feel that short assignment 2 is very suitable for being revised to better address this outcome because it compares two sources. I plan to analyze the scholarly pieces I used to compose this assignment one more time and look for potential points and nuances I might have missed out the first time I completed this assignment. 

Outcome 3 mainly has to do with developing a line of inquiry. I plan to use major paper 1 to address this outcome because my task in the paper was to develop a line of enquiry around a complex argument so my task closely relates to this targeted outcome which is why I decided to use Major Paper 1 for this outcome. 

Lastly to address outcome 4, I plan to use Major paper 1 again because this outcome mainly has to do with reworking on your assignment, something I extensively did for major paper 1 because it was reviews from multiple sources such as peers and by my instructor which makes it a good choice for this outcome.

I hope you enjoy my portfolio!