Hi, I’m Robert Nissim. This is my writing portfolio.
In this portfolio you will find a representative collection of the works undertaken in my Freshman Composition class at City College. This demonstrates a steady development in my writing skills. Please explore the timeline below.
February 26, 2017
Literary Narrative
This assignment required us to write an autobiographical essay which focused on multiple reading and writing experiences that occurred during particularly important times in my literacy.
I was able to locate a story I had written when I was seven years old, and I used this as a starting point for my development as a writer.
Here are the initial and final drafts of my essay:
Click these boxes to see supplementary materials related to this assignment:
Note: The workshops consisted of teaming up with a partner and sharing feedback about our writing exercises.
March 23, 2017
Exploratory Essay
The purpose of this assignment is to teach the method of academic writing. We were given two essays to read, and we were then asked to use the ideas in those essays to argue an original idea of our own, in a “they say/I say” format.
This was a challenging assignment, as expressed in this letter to the Professor, and it took me three drafts to get close to completing it correctly.
First Draft
Second Draft
Third Draft
Click these boxes to see supplementary materials related to this assignment:
May 9, 2017
Research Essay
This assignment required us to research either a place, figure or event of importance to New York City. I chose the old Pennsylvania Railroad Station and researched the question of why it was destroyed, while making a claim that this could have been saved.
The initial draft went through four more iterations before reaching the final version.
First Draft
Fifth Draft (FINAL)
Click these boxes to see supplementary materials related to this assignment:
May 20, 2017
Digital Portfolio
Creating this portfolio was our final assignment.
My portfolio documents the progress I have made in my writing through this Freshman Composition class. It demonstrates how I approached each essay assignment, the challenges I faced, and the learning I gained from the first draft through to the final draft of each essay. For each assignment I can go back and review the feedback received from both my professor and other students and see how I used their feedback to improve my essays.
In addition to learning about the composition of an essay, I also learned about the Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for creating annotated bibliographies and citing references throughout my composition. In reviewing my work you will see that I struggled with this between the second and third essays. My third essay shows that I finally grasped the rules of MLA and successfully used them to cite the works I used as references to my writing.
Throughout this class we were asked to write assignments in class. These assignments asked us to reflect on our challenges and triumphs when writing our first drafts. As I re-read these now it helps me understand where I had difficulties and where I have grown throughout this class.
While creating this portfolio I reorganized all of my class work and this helped me to see the structure of the class and what I have learned. In order to create an interesting portfolio, I added images that relate to my essays. I’ve used other images to guide the reader to different pieces of work related to each essay assignment. Since this is a “website”, I believe that it is important to make it visually appealing both to myself and to other readers.
A portfolio is a great way to document a class and be reminded of what one has learned throughout. I can imagine adding all of my classes at City College into this portfolio, thus producing a complete history of my work and what I have learned throughout my college experience.
More Work
Most of our classes started with a writing exercise. These exercises helped us practice and refine our literary skills. Below are some more examples of these writing exercises:
Thank you for visiting my portfolio.
Elucubrations 2017 