Recinos 1

Timothy Recinos
Professor Kole Matheson
English Composition 110C
25 April 2016

Final Portfolio Reflective Cover Letter

Throughout this semester in English Composition I have been meeting the
objectives of the course defined as Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) in preparation
to argue that I have successfully met the requirements of the course. Although I have
become proficient in the learning outcomes, I am still working on analysing and
composing different genres because being familiar with the different writing genres will
help me adapt to new assignments throughout my schooling.
The first SLO for English Composition is developing rhetorical knowledge by
understanding and using multiple genres and successfully shifting structure and
formality of the writing in accordance with the rhetorical situation. As a student, I have
successfully shown my understanding of multiple genres because this semester I wrote
an objective based expository essay that involved outside research and sources, a
personal exploratory essay on divorce and how it affects families, and a midterm that
followed the IMRAD genre. While taking English Composition, I learned how to
successfully shift the structure and formality of the writing to fit the rhetorical situation in
my exploratory essay. I show the usage of structure and formality in my exploratory
essay. My structure in the essay is a unstructured episode-like approach on the topic,
so theres no definite structure with the essay. My formality of the essay is informal,
because it is a personal approach to a controversial topic. The formality and structure of
my exploratory essay shows my knowledge of changing my writing to coincide with the
rhetorical audience, for example, I wrote an argumentative essay with a defined
structure and formality which differs from my exploratory essays rhetorical audience.

Recinos 2

The second SLO for English Composition is developing critical thinking, reading,
and information literacy skills by composing, reading, and using outside materials. I
developed critical thinking through my exploratory essay. The exploratory essay is an
example of composing for inquiry because the essay begins with a question, and then
uses anecdotal experiences to help me answer the question as I continue throughout
the essay. My documented essay topic proposal is an example of composing for
communication because the purpose of the writing is to persuade the audience;
furthermore, I successfully used cause and effect logic and chronological logic as a tool
to convince the audience that advancing technology now will ultimately benefit us all.
The writing journals are great examples of reading for learning and critical thinking
because each journal has a meaning; whether its Blues for Thinking which promotes
critical thinking by arguing that significantly more black people are being arrested for
drug use and possession while data shows that more white people are being admitted
in hospital emergency rooms for drug overdoses, or its a Chapter in the textbook which
is educational text designed to teach through a more formal structure. My documented
essay presentation shows that I have developed using outside critique, interpretation,
and response because I used my peers positive and negative ideas to better explain
my topic, for example, I received a lot of feedback that told me to make the opposition
more known because I was focusing too much on my side during my presentation. I
showed redesign as well as incorporating quotations and summaries in my documented
essay. I had a summary of my associated press video which also introduced an idea
near the end of the essay; however, after revision I decided to relocate the entire
paragraph so that the paragraphs would flow into each other which shows redesign. I
incorporated outside quotations from scholarly journals and sources in my documented
essay to develop legitimacy.
The third SLO for English Composition is developing effective strategies for

Recinos 3

drafting texts by working through multiple drafts, revising and editing, engaging in
collaborative aspects of writing processes, and reflecting on how they will develop skills
in the future. I have shown my ability to work through multiple drafts while revising and
editing in the process through my documented essay. I show revision and editing in the
documented essay, especially during the topic proposal and the argumentative section,
by revising the wording and ideas of the topic proposal to be an introduction to an essay
rather than a topic proposal for an essay, and editing the occasional comma splice and
misspelled words. I engaged in collaborative aspects of the writing process while doing
my documented essay presentation because I was given feedback by the peers in my
class. I also participated in one-on-one instructor conferences throughout the writing of
my documented essay which greatly helped me stay on track as far as what should be
in the essay, for example, I had a one-on-one instructor conference for the sole purpose
of making sure I had good examples of logos, pathos, and ethos in my argumentative
writing section. The peer and instructor responses let me reflect on what I did poorly on
so I can improve in the future, for example, I understand that my writing was prone to
redundancy before revision; therefore, I can focus on avoiding redundancy in the future
because I know it is my weakness.
The fourth SLO for English Composition is developing knowledge of conventions
through demonstrating writing competency, practicing genre conventions, and
understanding the concepts of intellectual property through citation. I demonstrate
grammar competency through my expository essay because of the editing I did with my
rough draft to remove grammatical errors. I demonstrate punctuation and spelling
competency through my writing journals because they are all punctuated properly and
all the words are spelled correctly. I developed knowledge of conventions through
practicing genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone and mechanics in my
writing. I practiced different structures of writing throughout the semester with my

Recinos 4

exploratory essay which has an unrestricted writing structure and my IMRD midterm
essay which follows a very strict structure. I practiced tone throughout my writing
journals because my responses varied based on the genre and purpose of the reading.
The chapter writing journals have an academic tone, so my response to the reading
would have a similar academic tone because the journals reflect on the reading; on the
other hand, my writing journal response for a non-academic story such as Drug War
Nightmare I would have a different tone based on how I interpreted the reading. I exhibit
an understand of the concepts of intellectual property through the application of citation
style in my annotated bibliography section of my documented essay. In the annotated
bibliography section, all of the sources I am using in my documented essay are
alphabetically ordered and correctly cited in MLA format, and the in text citations
correctly follow the MLA format as well.
I successfully met the four objectives of English Composition, and I can tell that I
have grown as a writer in the process. Not only have I learned to compose new writing
styles and genres such as the exploratory and IMRD genres, but I also learned better
revision, editing, and drafting techniques through the documented essay and its many
sections. I used to never think of myself as a good writer because I hated it, but now I
take pride in my essays and it motivates me to write more and to not be afraid of writing
assignments.