Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics California State University, Fullerton P.O. Box 34080 Fullerton, CA 92834-9480
Dear Dr. Bruce,
This letters purpose is to express my growth and development in regards to my writing as shown through this course and its assignments. Throughout the duration of this semester I have managed to improve tremendously in regards to the six Student Learning Outcomes (SLO's) that we were presented with at the start of this semester. This portfolio is compiled of the strongest pieces I have written while in this class in order to express my growth as both a writer and student in technical writing. I have organized my portfolio in such a way that presents my pieces in a manner that best exemplifies my growth in increasing chronological order of SLO skill mastery. The first document that can be found in this portfolio is a progress report sent to the iFixit company. I feel that my original submission does not fully reflect my abilities as a writer. The progress report was a document that my group and I were unfamiliar with in regards to its structure and presentation. I am confident that if we had had more time to work on the assignment we would have been able to grasp the concept more in order to have had a more successful submission. In this portfolio, you will also find your review of the original submitted document, as well as my final re-written draft. In the original piece you had commented that bullet points were not satisfactory in terms of expressing what our team had accomplished for our project. You will find that in the revised document I have replaced the bullet points with full paragraphs. I worked hard in order to correct any mistakes you noticed, including sections you felt were too vague. After revising my original submission and comparing it to my revised document, I believe you will notice that I have progressed tremendously in regards to mastering many of the SLOs. The progress report reflects my mastery of the collaboration SLO as the entire document was written through group effort. I learned a lot about writing a document with a group, as it took collaborative efforts and thoughts in order to formulate a paper we all agreed on and applied an equal amount of work to. Another SLO that is applied in this progress report, is the organization and focus SLO. A progress report requires a specific amount of organization that allows the information to be presented in an understandable and clear way. Initially the conclusion section of my groups progress report was unclear, therefore, I rewrote the conclusion in order to make our results clearer and more effective.
In addition to the progress report, I have included the results section of my
recommendation report, in the hopes that you see that it perfectly portrays my mastery of the ethical research SLO. Throughout this course we have completed assignments that require us to properly cite our sources. The ability to properly complete ethical citations is an important aspect of all types of writing, and I am confident that this course has helped me improve in that area of my writing. The academic language and design SLO is also portrayed in this document, as the entire format requires us as students to be capable of maintaining a certain level of formality while presenting our research and findings. In this portfolio you will also find an entry from my Writers Notebook in order to express my ability to not only write formally, but informally as well. Writing informally is part of the rhetorical focus SLO, and while it is important for us to write formally for certain aspects of any career in order to be successful, it is also important for us to have the ability to communicate in a clear and informal way in order to easily collaborate with one another and express any of our ideas. The final piece that expresses my mastery of the SLO's is presented in this portfolio cover letter. I believe that this letter encompasses many of the SLOs we have learned and covered throughout the duration of this semester. The main SLO covered in this letter is the rhetorical focus and persuasive argument. Persuasive argument is expressed through my ability to address you in a way that expresses how I have managed to improve my original piece. I have acknowledge both my strengths and weaknesses within this letter, and Ive worked to improve not only my weaknesses, but my strengths as well. Overall I have managed to learn a lot from this course and the SLOs we were taught to apply in our writing assignments. I hope to grow more as a writer now that I have been provided with tools that will help me modify and improve any future documents I have to write out. I hope you have enjoyed this portfolio and trust that I will continue to put all my efforts towards improving as a writer.