To whom it may concern,

The first thing that I notice off the bat with this portfolio is the presence of an aesthetic theme.
Corey is clearly trying to decorate her portfolio around Peter Pan with many pictures and
snippets from the movie. It is made clear on the front page that she did this because the movie
is similar to her journey as a writer.Under her first semester essays tab, when reading her first
few essays, it is easy to see that even in the beginning of her journey this year, that she already
had strong foundational skills as a writer. She makes good use of literary devices and her
essays flowed smoothly already. You can tell she definitely has far more positive responses to
her essays than negative ones. I certainly see that she is improving at immersing her reader in
the scene of her essays. She paints clear pictures with her words, which is a valuable skill in
writing. It is interesting to see the her different strengths and weaknesses in in the different
types of essays. It shows a lot about her as a writer when I see that she makes a very solid
research essay with few outlying problems in it compared to some other essays from the first
semester.

I agree with Corey in her first semester reflection when she says that her grammar has
improved over the semester. That is made clear in her essays when you read them
chronologically. As I said earlier, she already had great understanding of how to write
effectively, yet you can definitely see that she is improving in many ways. Another thing that you
can tell just this far into her portfolio is that you can tell that Corey actually cares about what she
is writing. She does not pick topics that she is not prepared to write deeply about. It is known
that a writer writes best when they are passionate about the topic. Corey is no exception to this.
Even in the portfolio itself you can see that Corey is enjoying compiling her works together in a
way to present to others. In the reflection, she is also managing to still maintain a consistent
them with the comparisons to Peter Pan, which is yet another valuable skill in writing. I can see
that she has pointed out some problems in her writing and I agree. Something that I personally
dislike about her first semester essays are that sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the number of
devices that she uses. Sometimes, you need to balance how much figurative and literal
language you use in your writing. It is already clear that she is good at using figurative, but she
needs to balance it with effective use of literal language as well.

Under the second semester tab, I immediately notice more parts of her writing in the form of
prewrites and rough. It is still interesting to see just how adaptable Corey is in her writing with
even more different types of essays. She maintains the success that she found in her first
semester writing. In this semester, she picks very interesting topics to write about. This is likely
because she is continuing to pick topics that she is actually interested in or passionate about.
Another thing that I am noticing in these works is that she is taking more risks as writer this
semester. Sometimes they are paying off, but sometimes it is too risky in my opinion. I think that
her persuasive speech was creative, but her goal of the essay could have been reached more
effectively. If you are going to make an intentionally short speech, at least make it effective in
the few words you put. Corey seemingly did not try as hard in these few words as she has in
other essays. In her second semester reflection, Corey wrote about how she was trying to
improve her vocabulary and I can see that she indeed did not put in an effort to do so.

Overall, Corey’s portfolio is an extremely impressive display of her abilities as a writer. She
should be proud of how far she has come over this past year. It makes me happy to see that
such a talented writer is able to utilize her strengths but also acknowledge areas for
improvement. Though Corey’s writing is not perfect, it is clear to me that she has worked hard to
improve this year and will likely continue to do so beyond her time in this class. I expect that her
talents as a writer will only grow more from here.

-Larry Utter