Part 1: I have learned a lot about myself as a reader, writer and scholar this semester. I had always struggled in writing prior to taking this class. However, I developed a new found respect for multimodal texts and the different ideas and ways you can portray a message to the audience. Unit 3 allowed me to be creative and expand on my ideas at the same time trying to inform/educate others of a certain issue or problem in our world. In addition, the discourse community writing assignment changed me and developed me as both a reader and writer. We got the chance to choose a issue in our discourse community and do research on it, this enabled me as the writer to show my perspective on the situation and tried to get the audience to respect and understand the situation. This helped me grow as a writer in formulating different ideas while using different methods of research. I will be able to use what I learned in this class not only in future classes but in my future career as well. My major requires us to formulate executive summary reports trying to persuade and inform the reader (CEO of the building) of changes we need in the daily operation of a building. Using a type of multimodal text can get the readers attention and allow the reader to analyze the situation in different aspects. For example, using a powerpoint presentation can give the CEO a different perspective on not only the issue or problem at hand, it allows them to gain a different perspective on me as the creator. By using different types of texts to send a message to others only enhances your reading and writing skills. Therefore, this course benefits me as a student right now in college and in the future on my job field.

Part 2: Two smaller pieces of work I completed this semester that I want to include in my portfolio are; Micro-Activity #2 and Micro-Activity #10. I want to include Micro-Activity #2 in my final portfolio because I struggled in understanding what a Discourse Community actually is. It took me a few days to understand the concepts and what is the purpose of a discourse community. After reading Douglass speech and doing some research on DC’s, it made it much easier for me to pick three discourse communities I am involved in. This micro-activity really gave me a different aspect on people and places. I would never think of people of actually being part of a Discourse Community. I found that discourse communities bring people closer together because of the fact that people we actually do not know may be in the same DC as us. Micro-Activity #10 is another small piece I want to add in my final portfolio. This assignment enabled us to find research of ongoing social issues in our society today. This benefited us as students to find reliable resources and prove our point of the social issue at hand. Furthermore, I was able to enhance my writing skills and think outside the box of broader social issues. I didn’t choose problems just because of the fact. All the problems I choose meant something to me and I wanted to fight for awareness or change to the problem on hand. Lastly, these two pieces of work stood out to me the most because it enabled me to express my ideas and opinions a lot better and improved my research and writing skills.