Authors note For my portfolio the two minor assignments that I decided to put in were my argumentative paragraph on the play Macbeth, and my personal language and literature essay. The major piece of work that I have put in the portfolio is my Macbeth essay. The reason I chose these pieces was because they were the three that I feel were the most interesting, two that I had the best success on, and one that I struggled on. The piece of work that I did the best on was my Macbeth essay. I achieved the goal that I had set for myself to get, which was a 70% on the essay.
I feel that the reason I was able to achieve my goal was because I was able to explain my points well and I did not wait to the last minute to complete the essay. The reason I decided to put my personal language and literature essay in was because it was my first grade 11 university essay and it was also my worst. By doing this essay I realized that I cannot leave all my work to the last minute because I will be unable to get the piece edited, my mark showed this. The last piece of work that is in my portfolio is my argumentative paragraph on the play Macbeth.
I decided to put this piece of work into my portfolio because I feel I did alright on the assignment, but I had the ability to do better. Throughout my grade 11 English course I have learned a great deal about what I need to improve on more and what I have already improved on throughout the semester. The writing skill I need to improve on most is my spelling and grammar. On all of my essays I have gotten the same comment, which usually goes something along the lines of “ need more editing” or “ need more proofing”.
Based on this I believe that to achieve a higher mark in my grade 12 English class next year I must do this better. Another part that I need to improve on is staying in the present tense. This was another comment on all of my essays, whether it was by my teacher, or a student editing my essay. I have trouble staying in the proper tense in my essays because I have difficulty remembering this. I also seem to write in the past tense because it makes the most sense. I feel this is the major reason.
It is hard to get it through my head that I need to write about something that already happened in the present tense. This is hard for me to do because when we talk to one another if we are talking about something that has already happened we say it in the past tense. Although I have parts I have to improve on I also have positives to look at as well. There were a few parts of some of my essays that were well done. These parts were the organization and the topic and concluding sentences.
I feel the reason I was able to do well on these parts is because I took my time on the topic and concluding sentences, also I feel that I was able to set up a good solid outline that helped guide me through the organization part of things. These were the two major factors why I did get the mark I wanted on my Macbeth essay as well as the argumentative paragraph. I also feel these are the two most important parts of the essay, and with a little more work on my spelling and grammar I will be able to achieve a much better and higher mark that I will be proud of.
