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Introduction

As an English major student of Janus Pannonius University of Pécs I attended Horváth József’s Writing and research skills class. In this course the students aim to improve their abilities of writing essays and research papers. They collect and edit their essays in a portfolio at the middle of the semester. Besides making my own I have read some of the portfolios of my classmates as well as works from former classes. The question I would like to discuss with the help of one of the writers is what was the process that lead to the finished collection.

Method

The collection I chose was Portfooliyo written by Baditz Mihály, first year English major of JPU. This portfolio contains five essays of various length. They are based on personal experience or ideas, so the collection itself provides an authentic insight to the life of Mihály

Generally, a student’s essay collection hides some interesting and exciting information about the person who worked on it. In the case of personal essays like the ones I read in Portfooliyo this secret is even more greater. However, I wanted to explore further elements which I think cannot be disclosed by the very reading of the writings. To put the subject in different new light I decided to meet the author and ask my questions. I made two interviews with Baditz Mihály (November 20, and December 2, 1998) and I read the portfolio (which was finished by November 13). between the meetings. Mihály came to my apartment in Pécs where we had the conversations. He did not receive any questions in advance as most of my questions were formed during the interviews. I asked the first questions only with a general knowledge about the circumstances and without knowing either the essays or the evaluation of Horváth József’s. During the interviews I made hand-written notes. After reading the collection and the evaluation we had another conversation. Both interviews helped a great deal understanding the process of making Portfooliyo.

Results and Discussion

First I asked questions about the method of writing and working with the finished pieces. The general process was the same for all of Mihály’s writings. He typed on his computer without a sketch or former plan. Word processing and using the automatic spelling correction option was more common than handwriting. “Bogus”, in a different way from all the other essays had an ending paragraph before the first part.

After this we discussed the question of choosing the topic for an essay. All five writings in his collection discuss personal topics. The reason for this as Mihály said was that he knew these things the best (“My table from my point of view”) or these things happened to him (“My arrival”, about his first day in London), so the ideas were obvious. He said that he did not find it hard to express his personal experiences or to describe the environment he lives in. He found the idea that another person might feel similar or saw the same situations motivating. He thought that the reader of these essays might experience a strong connection towards him as the writer because of this. ”Often we as the readers have the sense that we are in a casual conversation with the essayist who is just now, with us, thinking through his or her ideas. But do not be deceived. To create the sense of casual intimacy may take much planning and revising, for the good writer knows that few people want to read random and carelessly organized thoughts.” (Seyler 26.) I think Mihály sometimes managed to make the reader feel like being in a “conversation” with him what for me he reached with “Studying”. This essay I loved the best not only for this but because Mihály discussed a problem (wasting the time instead of concentrating on the hard work of studying) which is one of my biggest problems, too. He used a personal and clear voice quoting typical thoughts during the time wasted.

After finishing an essay the works themselves remained unchanged except “My table from my point of view”, which had a first title: My room. The reason for the change was that Mihály started the essay with the description of his table and did not continue with the rest of the room.

Working with a personal computer’s word processor Mihály used the automatic spell–check. Finishing the editing work he read through the collection before printing and corrected remaining grammar errors in the text.

After the first interview I read the collection and the attached evaluation by Horváth József’s. He mentioned his favorites (“Bogus” as “an excellent bad essay” and “My table from my point of view”), and also gave some tips for revising, an evaluation of language and other remarks on the portfolio.

Longer than two weeks after finishing his portfolio I asked Mihály for a second meeting. In this second interview I decided to discuss the questions of finishing and changing the collection.

Talking about the portfolio as an organic whole Mihály said that the essay “Have you ever...” does not fit to the collection totally. The reason for this, as he stated, was that he did not really feel like managing to make the reader conscious of the experience that inspired the essay.

To the question whether he thought the portfolio was full and finished when it was submitted he answered that he did not feel the need for finishing it at all. The essays can exist together or apart, the portfolio does not have to be complete.

We discussed the problem of selecting the proper pieces for a following collection . Mihály would not select now for a new portfolio, the same way he did when making the first one. That time he liked those five the most, for another collection he might pick some other essays in a random way.

As a finishing we discussed his thoughts and remarks on writing in general. He said that since starting the course his whole relation to writing changed. First he felt that he was forced to write and did not find any pleasure in that. After a number of essays he realized that he liked what he was doing, and since that time he has been sitting down to write regularly.

Conclusion

The two conversations with Mihály helped me not only to understand the essays in his portfolio but to evaluate them for myself and for this research. I felt interesting to experience how this student prepared his collection, which I think I introduced well enough as a process.

Some questions could be cleared only by investigating other students’ work in writing and collecting their essays. I experienced a number of interesting phenomena during this research and preparing my collection too. One of these is the evaluation given by the tutor, Horváth József. The official evaluation is not a real part of the portfolio still I tried to handle it together with the writings it was referring to. After finishing the portfolio, beginner writers appreciate a formal and clear evaluation of their work. For example Mihály found this critique rather encouraging and motivating to continue writing even after finishing the course.