Portfolio and Introductory Essay: Content Analysis of Hip-Hop Music

In the Writing Program, we assess how well we’re meeting program goals by assessing student writing every year. As part of that project, we ask all students completing first-year writing courses to create a portfolio of their work, along with an introductory essay.
Creating a portfolio and introductory essay also serves you individually, as a student and writer, by giving you the opportunity to reflect on your work and self-assess your strengths and challenges.
Your portfolio should consist of four pieces of writing. Please include three texts you have already produced. The texts you choose should illustrate the research, rhetorical analysis, and critical thinking skills that you have honed this quarter, focusing on demonstrating your understanding of the following course goals:
Demonstrate practical knowledge of academic research traditions (text-based/interpretive; measurement-based/empirical; and observational/qualitative) through effectively writing in two of those traditions.
Demonstrate practical understanding of appropriate rhetorical choices in writing for specific academic audiences or disciplines and specific popular, civic, or professional audiences, through both analysis and performance.
Demonstrate proficiency in finding, evaluating, synthesizing, critiquing, and documenting published sources appropriate to given rhetorical situations.
You can choose to include your Researched Commentary, your Podcast, your Mini-Project, a short weekly writing assignment, and/or a writing project completed for another class (or for another rhetorical situation – if you’d like to share your screenplay, vlog, or a really good twitter thread, feel free, as long as it’s from this academic year).
The fourth piece is an introductory essay that describes and analyses those texts. To be most effective, the introduction will probably need to be about 2-3 pages long. Your reflection will:
Introduce the writing projects you’ve selected, explaining the assignment and/or rhetorical situation for the work. Remember that most of your readers will be unfamiliar with your class.
Use these writing projects as evidence to illustrate the extent to which your writing has met the course goals listed above. Please describe and/or quote specific elements of your projects to support your claims.
Connect your work to the concepts and strategies that our class emphasized.
Your work will be evaluated on the basis of the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of your analysis, along with your ability to articulate your understanding of course goals and the specific themes of our section.
Because, in effect, you’re making an argument about your writing, your readers will value an ethos characterized by honesty, thoroughness, and thoughtfulness. In addition to discussing the strengths of your work this quarter, you should feel free to discuss challenges and uncertainties you faced, and limitations of your work.
Finally, please consider that the introductory essay is meant to be a piece of writing that you can complete in two hours. Choose your already-produced writing projects, print them out, set a timer for yourself, and sit down to write. If it makes you feel better, think of this as a final exam. Or, don’t.
Submission guidelines:
Put all your work together into one Word document: your introductory essay should be first. Include a page break at the end of each writing project, so that each new piece of writing starts on a new page.
Use a serif font that is easily readable by writing instructors, such as Times New Roman or Garamond, 12 pt. Double-space everything and use a first-line indent. These rules are okay to ignore if you have a stylistic reason for doing something different.
Give each of your writing projects a title – even the short ones. Include the title at the top of the first page of each piece of writing. Mention each project by title in your introductory essay.
Don’t include assignment prompts – if you’re sharing a short writing assignment, let it stand on its own without the prompt language.
Include a full MLA-format document header on the first page of your portfolio, but a title only (no document header) for subsequent pieces of writing within the portfolio.
Include MLA-format page numbers (your last name, page number) on each page.
If you include your Podcast project in your portfolio, please include a “slug” page with the podcast’s title in the portfolio, and a single line of text that reads “see enclosed mp3 file.” Upload the mp3 file to Canvas along with your Word document.