Dear Sir or Madam:
      

Thank you very much for taking your time to read my portfolio, which contains five essays that I have finished in the Academic Writing class this semester. All of these writings revolve around the stories in International Story, which is our text book in class. The book is a guide book for reading and writing. Through the semester, we have covered 8 chapters, from reading skills to revising drafts, each step further toward the goal of writing a good interpretive essay. Besides the interpretive essay, the class also involves writing reading logs for stories we read and timed-writing, which demands us to finish an essay on a given topic in limited time. The five essays in my portfolio contain my final timed-writing, a reading log, and three drafts for my interpretive essay.
      

At the beginning of the class, the concept of writing interpretive essays has never got to me. My writing ability is quite limited by the format of College Entrance Exam. Through this class, my teacher Ron has helped me develop my writing to a wider range and more insightful depth. I have learned how to come up with a thesis for an essay, and what the structure of an essay shall be like, both evidently displayed in my three drafts. I also tended to make some mistakes in spelling and tense, and often forgot to introduce my quotes. Ron pointed all of the problems out in his comments, which helped me very much to revise my essays. On the whole, not only has my concept of writing been refreshed, but I can write better language as well.
      

The first article is a reading log concerning the story The Americanization of Shadrach Cohen, which mostly tells the changes happened in one family, between father and sons. The reason why I choose this is that I think I very well understand the whole “Americanization” process, and I clearly explained my point of view in my article.
      

My second article is the final timed-writing. The given topic is: In Dead Men’s Path the priest says “let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.” Discuss what you think he means and what this saying reveals about him. The essay Dead Men’s Path deals with the conflict between a modern school headmaster and the traditional local villagers. In a limited time, I think I avoided some of my most common errors in this article, which proves that my use of language is becoming better.
      

The remaining three are draft one, two, and three for my interpretive essay on the story The Grass-Eaters. The story mainly tells us the life of Ajit Babu, who represents the poorest people in society. With Ron’s help, I revised every draft several times to find out and eliminate errors. So you can clearly see my progress in those drafts. I revised the quotes to better introduce the content to the readers; I added some content to better support my thesis; I deleted some content because it may be confusing or does not fit the thesis. I also corrected many tense and spelling errors, so the essay can be more fluent.
      

Of all the writings, I like my draft three most. Because I think through several times of revision, I was able to discover something hidden behind the story. I brought them out in my interpretive essay, and well explained it in draft three. I like it because I think it is original, discovered by myself and very few other people. I think this can prove my ability of advanced comprehension.
      

Thank you again for you attention. I hope you can enjoy my entries and get something you may need.
 
Sincerely yours,
Vince.