Dr.

Leslie Bruce
9th, 2015

May

Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics

California State University, Fullerton
Fullerton, CA 92834

Dear Dr. Bruce,

The purpose of this letter is to display my mastery of the six student

learning outcomes presented over the course of the semester. To show that I
am capable of utilizing the student outcomes in an advanced manner,
several documents have been included. The documents will be presented by
order of importance.
The first document included is my review article on epigenetics and
schizophrenia. The article encompasses several of the student learning
outcomes. This articles intended audience was the American Psychological
Association (APA). In order to submit the article to the APA, a strict set of
guidelines were followed. The APA requests that the citations are in APA
format. The review article utilized several different research studies. Each
study had to be properly cited in APA; both in text and in a works cited page.
This shows my capability to use ethical citations in an advanced manner. In
addition, my review article was written in a professional, scientific, and clear
way. This shows mastery of part one rhetorical focus because the APA is
comprised of science professionals and allowed me to write in a formal
manner. Due to the limited amount of space and large amount of
information, organization was an important factor in my review article. In
order to organize the information in an efficient way, I grouped similar
research articles into the same heading and used sub headings to
differentiate between the different articles. The final consensus of all six
articles was then placed in a conclusion paragraph. For example, there were
two research articles that dealt with genetic influenced schizophrenia, the
main heading was Inherited Genetics, Epigenetics, and Schizophrenia The
two articles were then given sub headings: Nuclear families and Twin
Studies. This demonstrates my ability to organize in an advanced way. The
tone and style of my review helped to express the meaning of the
information in each review article. In addition, many difficult to understand
concepts were explained prior to describing them within the contexts of the
study. This allowed the meaning of the studies to be better understood. Also,
I displayed sensitivity to gender and cultural differences by not assuming
anything about the authors and avoiding any improper pronouns that might
be cause for concern. This shows mastery of language and design.

To supplement the review article, a peer review that I conducted on a

fellow student portfolio is also included. This shows my ability to write
informally because the language is more conversational and is not
professional. This satisfies the second part of the rhetorical focus student
learning outcome. This peer review also satisfies the first part of the
collaboration because I am collaborating with others to improve their work.
To satisfy the second part of the collaboration SLO, my graded and edited
review article is included. The graded review article helped me to improve on
the context of my final review article for my portfolio.
Finally, this cover letter satisfies the persuasion SLO. My letter was
written to persuade you that I am capable of using all of the SLOs in an
advanced matter. I provided claims of why I felt I showed an advanced
understanding, and backed the claims up with evidence from my prior
writing. This class has helped me better my writing and I hope you find this
evident when looking at my portfolio.

Sincerely,
Caitlin Harris