Introduction
Over the semester, my understanding of literacy changed more than I expected. I came into the course thinking of literacy as something tied mostly to school (reading, writing, essays, and analyzing texts.) But as I moved through each assignment, I learned how much broader and more complex literacy really is. I learned to ask better questions, to analyze everyday practices with more attention, and to revise my writing with a clearer purpose. This portfolio brings together all of my work and shows how my thinking developed across the semester. Several learning goals shaped my development in this course, especially Inquiry, Research Methods, Information Literacy, and Reflection & Adaptation, and every assignment helped me to meet these goals.
Assignment 1 taught me how to look closely at everyday places and ask questions I never thought to ask. A grocery store seemed ordinary and unremarkable, until I started paying attention to the texts embedded in it and the practices surrounding them. Harris Teeter seems like a place you move through on auto-pilot, and it wasn’t until this project that I realized how much it is a fundamentally text-based experience. This was the first time I tried observing and documenting literacy in the wild, and it set the tone for the rest of the semester. I had to decide what counted as evidence, when to use scholarship to support my ideas, and when certain readings simply weren’t relevant. That process strengthened my information literacy, because I had to choose sources that clarified my thinking instead of overwhelming it.
Assignment 2 shifted my focus from public spaces to one person’s literate life. Interviewing my uncle Jason prompted me to think about literacy sponsors, family histories, and the workplace as a site of learning. When I revised this piece, I learned how much stronger my writing becomes when I follow the thread of a single idea- storytelling- and ground it in theory. This assignment strengthened my ability to adapt my writing based on feedback, and to revise not just for polish but for depth. This was probably my favorite assignment, because my uncle gave a great interview that was easy to work with. I was able to do another brief interview with him again, which helped me expand Brandt’s theories into his adulthood, and explore a dimension of storytelling that I didn’t expect.
Assignment 3 was daunting at first. I couldn’t figure out which group to research, and the task was unlike anything I had done. Collecting data from a Discord screenwriting community required methods I hadn’t used before: gathering artifacts, coding patterns, identifying themes, and deciding what the data actually showed. Early drafts of the memo were unfocused because I hadn’t yet figured out my “project.” Through revision I learned how to define a focus, back up claims with coded evidence, and how to connect those findings to scholars like Swales and Brandt. This was the clearest example of the course goal Research Methods, because I had to make choices grounded in method rather than instinct. It also pushed me hardest in terms of Inquiry, because the assignment didn’t set super-clear guidelines. I strive when an assignment has super-clear requirements and goals, and I appreciated the challenge of having to define those goals for myself.
Assignment 4 helped me step back and understand how scholars frame their own projects. Learning Harris’s “Coming to Terms” framework allowed me to read more actively and identify an authors’ aims, methods, and materials. It also helped me see how my own work fits into a larger conversation about literacy. When revising this assignment, I learned how to use sources more strategically, which was another step forward in information literacy.
Across all four assignments, revision played a bigger role than I expected. In basically every class I’ve ever taken, an assignment was in the past once handed in. This course challenged me to rethink structure, expand my analysis, cut irrelevant material, and respond directly to feedback. In doing so, I made choices that reflect real growth in Reflection & Adaptation. I now understand revision as a way of clarifying my thinking, not just cleaning up sentences.
Together these assignments show the arc of my learning this semester: I moved from describing literacy to analyzing it, from summarizing sources to using them purposefully, and from writing to finish an assignment to writing as a way of understanding something new. My goal in this portfolio is to make that progression clear, to show how my thinking developed, why particular revisions mattered, and how these projects collectively shaped my understanding of literacy, writing, and research.