W 021 F

Introduction
The task to examine students' portfolios made me curious because these writings represent the inner thoughts of their writers, as well as tell a lot about their opinions on different topics. To write portfolios was not a task only to develop students' writing skills, but to live with the opportunity and get to know each other more. I was always interested in other persons' point of views, way of thinking because I could profit from them, draw conclusions for myself; so I had no problem selecting from the topics.

I will analyze four student's portfolios focusing on their contents, and present their main features.

Method
The three students who made their portfolios available for me (Student A, Student B, Student C) took the Writing and Research Skills coarse in the spring semester of 1998, and all of them were first year students at SPU.

The fourth portfolio belonged to me; the reason for why I chose me, too, was to find out how objective I can be about my own work. In order to be able to analyze it so, I tried to rely on the teacher's remarks and comments.

There were no special conceptions by which I chose the three persons; I asked a number of students to help me with my research by handing their portfolios over to me, and I took the first three.

I wanted to follow a logic in the analyzing of the portfolios, so I decided to concentrate first on the outsides of the portfolios, the first aspect was their getups. Then I was interested in the insides of the portfolios, so secondly I wanted to focus on their contents: the topics chosen by the students, number of essays the collections contained, their length.

Thirdly I chose two from the Zinsserian "bits and pieces”: verbs and mood changers in order to find out whether students are aware that it is useful to "alert the reader as early as possible in a sentence" (Zinsser 115) or that "active verbs push hard, passive verbs tug fitfully" (Zinsser 111).
The fourth aspect was teacher, Horvath József 'S comments, remarks: how found attached to the essays, how many of them were corrections, pieces of advice or how many times he indicated that he liked the works.

Results and Discussion

The outlook of the portfolios
I received two portfolios without cover, they were not the original writings, but photocopied versions stapled together. The third one was placed in a plastic slipcase, but the pages were not stapled, the essays were also photocopied. The fourth one had a paper slipcase with original essays.

The topics chosen by the students:
Students could choose from several different topics, among them were quoted essays, essays with two introductions and two conclusions. They wrote about one of their physical experiences, could choose topics from previous proficiency tests. The tutor asked them to write a miniature essay and to share with the others how they use their dictionaries.

The number of essays varied between three to seven. Their length varied between two to eleven paragraphs. On average, Student A wrote five paragraphs, Student C and Student D four paragraphs, and Student B wrote the most of six paragraphs.

Passive constructions in the essays
The number of Passive constructions varied between zero and ten. Student A used ten altogether in three essays. Student B used thirty passive verbs in seven essays. There were fourteen passive verbs in Student C's six essays and Student D used ten passive constructions in seven essays. Students did not prefer the passive constructions, they used active verbs more often. I found these numbers acceptable, it showed that students were aware of the difference between active and passive verbs and knew which of the two constructions is more valuable.

Mood changers
I chose the following mood changers, which I looked for in the essays: "but", "yet", "however", "thus", "instead". The number of mood changers varied from zero to five per essays. Student A included three mood changers in three essays. Student B used five in seven essays. Student C had nine mood changers in six essays, and Student D wrote eighteen mood changers in seven. Altogether, there were thirty-five mood changers in twenty-three essays. Twenty-seven of them were the word "but". Also, students used the words: "however", "instead" and "yet".
Students did not use mood changers frequently and the one they applied often was 'but", which is the most common one among all the mood changers.

Teacher’s comments and mistakes
There was no comment at all in Student B' s portfolio as the essays were photocopied before submitting them to the teacher. In Student A's portfolio there were altogether forty-eight remarks and comments, Two of them were "smiling Joe’s" indicating that the tutor liked the essays, the others were pieces of advice concerning vocabulary and grammatical corrections. In Student C’s portfolio I found fifteen remarks from the teacher. Joe smiled six times; the other comments were advice and corrections. In Student D's portfolio there were sixty-three different comments, four "smiling Joe’s", the others were different pieces of advice and corrections.
The essays were not perfect, they contained mistakes, spelling errors, had style problems and the students did not always follow the five T-tips. The corrections and advice were in connection with these problems, while the ‘smiling Joe’s’ indicated good vocabulary usage, sentence constructions or nice style. There were more corrections in number than appreciations, but no major mistakes.

Conclusion
My first result was in connection with the usage of passive verbs. I observed that the students do not use passive constructions frequently; they are aware that active verbs are more useful and valuable. My second result concerned the mood changers and the outcome was that students do not use them as often as they should he, however they play significant roles in sentences. My final conclusion was that the teacher devoted a lot of attention to the portfolios: he showed concern towards the writings, which was definitely a great help for all students.