Coralee Harding
WP#4 Cover Letter Draft
Eng102-7891 Adams
Nov. 28 2007
Reflective Cover Letter
During the course of this class, I have learned several techniques that have helped me to become a better writer. I also learned new strategies and styles for writing, as well as using techniques that I learned in high school. The things that I have learned will be extremely useful in projects to come. The course outcomes that I’ve improved at the most and feel the most comfortable with are organizing, using consistent tone and voice, and assessing my own writing. One area that I still need to improve is using correct documentation formatting. All of the deadlines and homework assignments that are refered to can be found on my class blog webpage at http://www.harding302.blogspot.com.
Course Outcome 1. The rhetorical context for my writing projects were best identified in deadline 3. In the assignments involved with this deadline, I was able to narrow my broad topic to focus on a more specific topic, context, purpose, and audience. Then the topic eventually led to my research question. This progress can be seen under my blog for deadline 3 homework 6. The rhetorical context for the final research paper, as well as the research proposal was extremely important to the overall voice and feel of all the projects. By reading my final copy of writing project 3, I feel that this course outcome was achieved.
Course Outcome 2. The homework assignments that taught me about organizing my writing were extremely helpful to writing project 1 and 3. I now realize the importance of organizing my thoughts and ideas before I start writing a rough draft. One method that we learned in class was the Toulmin outlining method. This outline can be found in deadline 9 homework 4. Although this strategy was helpful, I benefited more from utilizing a cluster map. The cluster map I created can be found at http://www.gliffy.com/pubdoc/1307185/L.jpg. This in one course outcome that I feel I have the most skill in and was most beneficial.
Course Outcome 3. In my writing projects 1, 2, and 3 I feel that I used consistent tone, voice, and diction, but I had some trouble with grammar and mechanics. So part of this outcome was easy for me and I had trouble with part of it. The most useful technique that I learned to improve my grammar and mechanics was done in deadline 8 homework 5. In this assignment I used the activities found in the OWL at Purdue website. I learned how to use correct grammar and mechanics. At this website I also learned more about word choice, which can be seen in deadline 13 homework 1.
Course Outcome 4. Online and print sources are two resources that I read about in deadlines 3 and 4 homework assignment 1. I learned how to search books, articles, and other paper sources in high school, but became familiar with searching online in this class. I was used to just using basic web search engines such as Google or Yahoo, but now I know there are more options available for searching online sources. I used several online resources that can be found in my annotated bibliography available to view under deadline 9 homework 2.
Course Outcome 5. Avoiding plagiarism completely can be a hard thing to do. I have never and will never copy a document word for word from another document and knowingly not give the author proper credit for it. I'm a photographer and it would be devastating to see someone else who stole or copied my work and replaced my name with theirs. I would never intentionally plagiarise. But while researching I read and saw a lot of material and while writing my papers I summarized basically everything I read into different paragraphs. I didn't keep very good notes of "who said what" and it was difficult and time consuming to go back and find where that direct source was. There was some good information that I had to leave out for that reason. This was not one of my strongest course outcomes because of my lack of organizing my sources and notes. I know now how to improve this issue in my future writings.
Course Outcome 6. Correct documentation played a big roll in all of the writing projects. The documentation style that was required in this class was MLA (Modern Language Association). This should have been an easy course outcome, but for me it was not. My biggest issue was documenting sources that did not have all of the information required for a citation, or at least that I could recognize. I haven't read anything that tells you what to do if this happens, so I was kind of lost when it came to that. This was one of my weakest course outcomes that could use a lot of improvement. I will solve this issue for future writings by searching it out more, and asking whoever I can about it. My citation documentation can be seen in my blog under deadline 9 homework 2.
Course Outcome 7. Peer reviewing was a very important process to revising my rough drafts for all of the writing projects. Input that I gained from my classmates was very helpful to finding my mistakes and correcting them. I also found it beneficial to peer review my classmates writing projects. In doing so I saw things that they did in their projects that I wanted to adapt into my projects to improve them, such as their style or mechanics. I feel that this was one of my strongest course outcomes. I was able to provide useful information and critiques to my peers, as well as gain from their corrections made to my documents.
Course Outcome 8. Accessing my own writing is difficult. If I make a mistake in writing, unless it is obvious, I am likely to skip over it and not notice it. That's why it is beneficial for me to have conferences, reviews, and evaluations. I enjoy reading other's opinions about my writing projects, and using their suggestions to make improvements.
Course Outcome 9. In the beginning of this class it was hard for me to use online resources to create, format and edit my writing projects. Not because I'm not technology savvy, but because my internet browser did not support several of the options available in Google documents. I solved this problem by downloading a different web browser that I use only for this class. I work with computers on a daily basis and using one for all of my homework assignments and writing projects was not a problem This is my biggest strength out of all the course outcomes. The only problem I do have is linking websites. Although I have the new web browser, the linking option is not always available or working properly.
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