Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics California State University, Fullerton Fullerton, CA 92834-9480
Dear Dr. Bruce, In this letter, I will write to you on why I arranged my documents this way and understand why it is in my portfolio. These documents are the work that I have done in my English 301 class which includes the writers notebook, my peer review, a classmates peer review, and the original and revised argumentative paper. I believed that these assignments have shown my improvements in the student learning outcomes (SLOs) throughout the semester and that I am ready to take on to the next step in writing. I would like to start off with the writers notebook which would cover the SLO one. At the beginning of the semester, I found this class to be very challenging and difficult because I was not able to write and express my ideas freely. However, these journals have helped me developed the skills to write in an informal style. My second document is the peer review that I wrote for a group project paper. This document covers the requirements for SLO six because it helps evaluate the students paper from any grammar mistakes and errors; as well as improving their writing skills. For example, there was a paper that had the topic sauna and I wrote in the comments clearly expresses the use of a sauna and how it works. Need to cite pictures. Some citations are not proper on pages 4 and 6.This shows that by giving feedbacks, it would help the student improve their writing and prevents plagiarism. I also have the document of the students peer review on my argumentative paper which I used to revise my paper. This shows that I recognized my mistakes and willing to take their advice in order to become a great writer. My last document that I would like is the argumentative paper which I put as my last document in the portfolio because it is probably one of the biggest assignments I ever had in my years of writing. With that being said, I believe that this document covers all four of the SLOs. At first, it was very difficult for me to write this paper because of using the proper citation, organizing my ideas, and having to write so many pages. The major problem I faced in this assignment was the SLO two: ethically cite and presenting the information from a variety of sources appropriately. For this reason, I did not use the proper citations and reference in my original document and as of result; I made a number of errors in my paper and received a poor grade. However, these mistakes have been fixed with the revised paper to show that I have improved in this area and that I would not make the same mistake again. I learned to understand that it is important to use the proper citation and reference because it helps provide evidence and support for your arguments, as well as giving credit to the original scholars. In addition, this assignment would meet the requirements for SLO three which is to show opposing arguments, assumptions, and cultural values. In my paper, I argued that we need to have strict regulations on oil spills to prevent harmful damage to the environment and the marine life. Although, I said that we need to have strict regulations, I counter argued that we should not have more regulations because it can have a negative impact on the countrys economy since the government would have to spend millions of dollars to enforce it. Lastly, this assignment would also cover SLO four and five because I argued to have a more strict regulations on oil spill and explained the causes of oil spill and the impact it can have on the environment, economy, atmosphere, and the marine life. Furthermore, I made sure to have an open mind while writing this paper because many students may have different views on the regulations of oil spill. I would like to say that I have enjoyed this class because it has not only taught me a few new writing techniques that I can use in future writings, but also helped improve me as a writer. Furthermore, this class has led me to acquire more writing skills than I originally encompassed before I enrolled into the class at the beginning of the semester. Hopefully, this letter would show that I have accomplished all of the six student learning outcomes.