Dr.

Leslie Bruce

University Hall room 435

800 N. State College Boulevard

Fullerton, CA 92831

Dear Dr.Bruce,

The purpose of this cover letter is to illustrate my progress in meeting the

courses Student Learning Outcomes. I will provide examples of assignments
that represent my competence in meeting the six SLOs; rhetorical focus,
ethical research, persuasive arguments, organization and focus, academic
language and design, and collaboration.
In DB #2, I demonstrate my understanding of the SLOs of
organization/focus and academic language/design. For example, I correctly
identify successful elements of organization and design that have parallels in
the three Wikipedia pages, The three similar characteristics of organization
that are most apparent include the introduction paragraph, table of contents,
and a picture. As well, my understanding of academic language is shown by
identifying the writing style and the similarities between the Wikipedia pages,
All three pages share a similar writing style convention, that being one of a
formal reporter. From what I can tell, the author's of the articles attempt to
provide facts, and only facts, to their readers.
In DB #8, I provided an alternative form of a classmates argument that helped to
accomplish their goal, an example of an appropriate thesis may be, The topic of the
death penalty is one that is contested among Americans, however a majority of them
support it. It is for the reasons of [] that the majority of Americans support the death
penalty. This is an appropriate thesis because it presents for readers a clear
understanding of what the paper will be about. This excerpt from DB #9 stands as a
strong example of meeting the SLO of collaboration.
The annotated bibliography best represents my accomplishment of the persuasive
argument SLO. Addressing opposing arguments is key to a successful persuasive
argument, and the following quote provides an example, The author argues the topic
of modern eugenics in HGE discussion is widely debated and a lack of consensus has
formed. I included this from my bibliography because it shows how I used different
perspectives to accomplish my goal of making a persuasive argument. The annotated
bibliography also satisfies the ethical research SLO. The MLA citation style is used
correctly. My sources were appropriate however I may have had more success in
meeting this SLO if I used more peer reviewed sources versus those sources with a
biased viewpoint.
In DB #3, the discussion of plagiarism is in the context of college courses
with an audience of college students. This is an example of meeting the SLO
of rhetorical focus because I first had to focus on what I wanted to accomplish
in my discussion, then I had to understand my audience to formulate an
argument relevant to the context of discussion. Understanding the audience is
paramount in a successfully written argument. If I were presenting this
argument to elementary schools students instead of college students, the
writing style and context used would have changed for sure.
Despite my successes in meeting the SLOs, there are aspects where I do
need to make improvements. An example a shortcoming in the ethical research
SLO lies in the ethical issue prompt in which I employed the incorrect use of
in-text citation. It does not match the requirement called for by the MLA
writing style. Another example of a shortcoming in the collaboration SLO is
that of DB #12, the peer review of editorials. I do not believe I contributed to
the improvement of my peers work because I failed to provide sufficient
constructive criticisms that my peer may have used to revise his editorial. I
have trouble providing criticisms because sometimes I do not have faith in my
own writing styles, so I question my ability to to provide effective criticism. I
hope that understanding my weaknesses as well as my strengths will help me
improve my writing style as a college student.