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English Portfolio - ENG 4098

Senior English majors enrolled in their final semester will register for ENG 4098: English Portfolio. ENG 4098 is required, but it must be taken in the semester of your graduation, only.

To satisfactorily complete ENG 4098, graduating seniors must create and reflect on a portfolio of written work from UHD English courses.

The English Portfolio is an opportunity for majors to reflect, both personally and critically, on the thinking, reading, writing, and research completed in UHD English courses. It asks you to notice what you have written about as well as how and why you have written it and any small or large transformations in your career as a student writer. Based on what you observe about your work, select what you wish to showcase as a collection of your writing.

ENG 4098 is highly independent, offering no credit, costing nothing, and with no formal meetings. You must log into the Canvas site for ENG 4098 in the first week of classes to read the directions provided there about how and when to submit the portfolio.

Purpose of the Portfolio

Because it reflects on both the B.A. in English (and its concentrations) and what you have learned while a student of our degree, the portfolio will be useful in several ways.

Purpose of Portfolio:

  • help you recognize and assess your own progress as a writer and scholar of literature and culture
  • provide you with an organized sample of student writing expected by some employers, or the kernel of a writing sample usually required for admission to graduate programs
  • serve as your entry in the annual UHD BA in English Portfolio contest
  • enable the faculty to assess how well the BA in English fulfills its educational goals

Submission of the Portfolio

Each semester, the deadline for submission will be announced on the ENG 4098 Blackboard site. The portfolio is digital and turned in through an online system called Tk20. Step-by-step directions for how to upload the portfolio will be provided through the  Canvas site for the course. Questions or concerns about how to upload the portfolio go to UHD’s IT department – 713-221-8540.

Each portfolio component has a tab displayed across the top of the portfolio. To include the required components in your portfolio, click on the tabs and upload an appropriate document file.  

You will submit: 

  • A simple letter: This letter informs the Coordinator of the BA in English that you have completed the portfolio. Be sure to include reliable contact information for you after you graduate (email, phone number, mailing address).

  • A reflective essay: This is the only new piece of writing for the portfolio. The reflective essay is metacognitive, which means that you must think about how you thought in the essays you have selected. How, for example, do your selected essays meet the Learning Outcomes for the BA in ENG? Instead of writing "I liked X or Y about Essay 2," consider instead observations such as "Essay 2 shows that I am able to . . ." or "Essay 2 illustrates my skill in close reading a nineteenth-century narrative because . . . ." You might find it helpful to identify in your reflective essay the critics, schools of criticism, or theories that have expanded or focused your insights into literature. This, like the other essays in your portfolio, should exhibit features expected of academic writing—a firm structure, solid logic, appropriate citation, and expert editing.

  • Four to five essays: Select essays from classes taught by different UHD English professors. Choose essays that show you know how to write in a variety of ways (analytical, reflective, interpretive, or final papers that demonstrate research-based argumentation) and about a variety of subjects. Submit no more than one example of creative writing. Make sure each essay shows your name, a title, the name and number of the course you wrote it for, and its date of composition. Do not revise for the portfolio.

Degree Learning Objectives and Evaluation Criteria

1. read literary, cultural, and scholarly texts critically; i.e.

  • analyze, through close reading, the rhetorical and aesthetic qualities of texts
  • demonstrate understanding of the characteristics, conventions, and techniques associated with various literary genres
  • situate texts in their historical and cultural contexts
  • demonstrate understanding of the literary traditions in United States, British, and other national literatures

2. produce mature college-level writing that

  • advances rhetorically astute arguments about texts
  • analyzes texts within their historical and cultural contexts
  • employs appropriate scholarly diction and tone
  • applies a guiding critical methodology

3. use sources appropriately (with correct documentation) to

  • advance/enrich an argument
  • demonstrate engagement in critical debate