Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics California State University, Fullerton 800 North State College Boulevard Fullerton, CA 92831
Dear Dr. Bruce,
This letter's purpose is to persuade you that I have accomplished all the student learning objectives (SLO) outlined in the syllabus. The portfolio will contain writing materials such as a review paper, a section of the writer's notebook, and a peer review conference sheet. These three writing samples will collectively contain all the pieces for the student learning outcomes and demonstrate my accomplishment as well as my growth as a writer. I specifically ordered my portfolio, in increasing order, to what I believe are my greatest achievements in the course. My first document, the writer's notebook, fulfills SLO number one. My writer's notebook holds my thoughts and ideas from questions that were asked about writing. I completed the writer's notebook during class and utilized an informal writing technique which satisfies part of the first SLO one. The review paper shows the accomplishment of the second part of SLO one. The review paper's purpose was to demonstrate our ability to read primary literature sources and efficiently present the information collected in a review format. I utilized a formal writing method because my chosen journal had a formal writing requirement. The writer's notebook and the review paper fulfills writing for a variety of scientific audiences and purposes which complete SLO one. SLO five can be completely satisfied with the revised review paper. One part of SLO five must demonstrate sensitivity to gender and cultural differences and the review paper follows through by using gender neutral pronouns. The revised review paper shows the language and design that concisely express and influence meaning with the use of sentence structure skills learn throughout the semester. These skills involved vigorous verbs and removal of prepositions that structure the sentence in a concise manner and help with the meaning. The conference sheet document completes SLO six because this helped with improving my own and others' writing skills. The revised review paper shows my writing skill improvement from the original submission as I fixed many problems by focusing on the use of vigorous verbs. I understand that by using active verbs, the sentences becomes more direct and concise, therefore, focused my efforts to change passive verbs into active verbs. I assessed my peer's writing assignment for the second conference meeting by reading over and commenting his proposal. While reading my peer's paper, I focused in on looking for sections that satisfy the SLO's and sentence structure issues. SLO two's main goal enables students to ethically and properly cite sources. For my original review paper, I made a critical mistake in not citing figures and schemes. Citations for figures and schemes are just as important as citing texts. The revised review paper in my portfolio demonstrates my accomplishment of SLO two because I show properly cited texts, figures, and schemes. Learning how to properly organize a paper was a skill that I thought I knew how to manage, but I only knew of IMRAD. For the review paper, I planned on using the IMRAD organizational method, but instead I implemented a technique learned in class, topical organization, in order to showcase my growth as a writer. I was able to organize the review paper in topical sections as product formation (five or six membered heterocycles) and have subsections named observed yields and oxime reactivity. Through this cover letter, I am persuasively writing to convince you that I successfully learned all the SLO's, therefore, SLO four is satisfied. The review paper shows my success of SLO three because I compared, contrasted, and synthesized relative information obtained from reading primary literature sources. This specific part contained in the review paper is my greatest accomplishment because I took raw information from the primary articles and concisely explained my findings. This accomplishment shows my growth as a writer this semester and also my potential writing ability. This English writing course has helped me grow as a writer by learning new techniques such as editing practices, organizational methods, and sentence development. I will continue to use what I learn to grow into an even better scientific writer by working on my weakness and improving my strengths. Thank you for reading this cover letter, and I hope you enjoy reading my portfolio.