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UPDATED 11/13/07
For students completing the series of First and University Seminars in academic year 2007-2008
You may download these guidelines as a Word document.
After the completion of your last University Seminar, you will compile a final writing portfolio and submit it to the SAGES office (103 Crawford Hall). If you will complete your final University Seminar in Fall 2007, please submit your portfolio to the SAGES office by the end of January 2008. If you will complete your final University Seminar in Spring 2008, please submit your portfolio to the SAGES office by the end of May 2008.
You are encouraged to select your best work from each of your SAGES seminars and to revise that work to accommodate an audience that will be unfamiliar with the seminar contexts for which you wrote the original papers. Certainly you will want to correct grammatical and/or structural issues identified by your instructors. You are welcome to consult your co-instructor, faculty seminar leaders, the Writing Resource Center, or the SAGES Peer Writing Crew in developing your writing portfolio. (To make an appointment with the SAGES Peer Writing Crew or the Writing Resource Center, please visit http://tutortrac.case.edu.)
PORTFOLIO REQUIREMENTS
The writing portfolio should contain the following material in order:
1.) A 1-2 page reflective essay (see guidelines below)
2.) One essay from your First Seminar
3.) One essay from a University Seminar
4.) A research essay from the other University Seminar (10-12 pages in length) that integrates primary and secondary source material and that includes a bibliography
If you did not have the opportunity to write a 10-12-page research paper in either of your University Seminars (a fact you would document by submitting copies of the syllabi from those seminars), then you may use a research paper from another course taken at Case (minimum length of 10 pages) or, in consultation with the SAGES Director (peter.whiting@case.edu), you may design an alternate submission from other available papers.
REFLECTIVE ESSAY
The reflective essay introduces your work to the Writing Portfolio Committee. It is a new piece of writing, though you may wish to consult your First Seminar reflection paper (if you completed one) as you compose this essay. The portfolio reflective essay should both comment on the pieces you have selected for your portfolio and assess your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. The essay should include quotations from your own work and may include feedback from your seminar leaders and co-instructors. While you may choose the narrative mode for this essay, be sure to offer concrete examples and explanations of your strengths and weaknesses. In other words, simply stating that you are now "a better writer" than you were when you matriculated is not enough. Instead, demonstrate your strengths by offering examples from your work that showcase your ability to write thoughtful, analytical essays that fulfill the SAGES writing criteria.
In your reflective essay, consider answering some of the following questions: What do you think you achieved in the essays you selected? What did you learn in the process of writing and revising them? How do the essays collected in the portfolio demonstrate your writing strengths? What areas of your writing will you continue working to improve? What themes or questions emerge from your writing experience in SAGES?
PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT
Your portfolio will be evaluated for completeness and your pieces of writing will be assessed using the following attributes of good writing:
- Papers adhere to a single, specific controlling idea or argument
Papers offer scholarly arguments (not opinions)
- Papers make appropriate use of evidence and supporting details
- Papers demonstrate a logical progression of ideas
- Papers do not have unnecessary repetition or padding
- Papers have consistent and appropriate tone/style
- References are adequate and properly cited
- Papers are reasonably free from mechanical errors
- Papers demonstrate control over sentence boundaries
- Papers demonstrate appropriate vocabulary and word choice
NOTIFICATION
After review of your writing portfolio, you will be notified whether you have submitted a satisfactory portfolio and therefore fulfilled the University's Composition Requirement. The vast majority of portfolios are deemed satisfactory. If your portfolio is judged unsatisfactory, you will be advised how you might improve the portfolio for its next submission.
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