User:Wietsezuyderwijk/Muckraking Media/Language Portfolio

About Myself
Name: Wietse Zuyderwyk

Class: EN2V2

Teachers: Frans Niessen and Theo Bührs

Grammar
When I begun this course I thought I was fairly good at grammar. This course, however, has showed me that the grammar rules I used to know are too simple: the lectures on adverbials inspired me to improve my grammar skills; to embark on a constructivist approach, greatly helped by Theo, to get the rules as clear-cut as possible into my head. I now can easily distinguish between an adverbial and an indirect object, for instance; these lectures helped me to get thinks straight.

With respect to grammar did Frans teach us about passive voice constructions.

Articles
Writing the articles, I made an effort to use my, already existing and newly obtained, knowledge of grammar to exploit all possible sentence constructions writing in as much different styles as possible to hold my reader's attention. I learned about subleties, like appositions, which can alter the meaning of a sentence considerably. As said, among others, the lecture on disjuncts and adjuncts helped me with this.

I tried to conciously use the passive voice when appropriate.

Presentations
Practicing my presentation skills was one thing I considered very much valuable for my teacher training. The instructions, feedback and lectures given by Frans with regard to the topic have build me more self-confidence and insight.

But practice, however important the theory has been, was the thing I really could use. I, as said, got more confident in the end knowing clearly what the important aspects of presenting are.

About the Dossier
The articles show my progress in writing. My peer revisors told me I should write shorter sentences with fewer subclauses and maybe start off with a sentence's main clause as opposed to any subclauses.

The teacher's have taught me when I should and when I shoudln't break up sentences; how to avoid fragments and how to keep it well-structured among other things.

Contents of Dossier
Enclosed in the dossier are:
 * 1) the peer-revised articles