Portfolio Cover Letter

Outcome 1

Throughout the course, I have conducted research on my discourse community, the Ave

Maria University Baseball Team. Using library databases, I found articles that helped to build a

foundation for my research. To find the most relevant studies for my topic, I first sorted through

different key word searches, like “communication and sports” or “confidence, trust, and

athletes,” to find a mixture of perspectives on the topic. I then analyzed the articles for key ideas

and findings that were important in the conversation that I looked to continue. I focused mainly

on the introductions and discussions in my secondary research because they show where the

conversation has been and where it is going. This helped me determine whether the article would

be useful to my research. In analyzing the introductions, I also realized that I often found more

beneficial sources that the researchers had used to frame their study. Later in the process I also

looked into the methods and results to grasp the different ways data had been collected for these

studies.

Many of the sources that I was able to find had overlapping findings and secondary

research. This made it easy to synthesize the texts and show the connections between the ideas.

For example, in my literature review, I noted that several articles had findings related to self-

confidence. I first showed how Martens et al. and Woodman & Hardy had similar results in their

studies of a direct correlation between confidence and performance, but I added the findings

from Stanger et al. that showed no significant impact of confidence (Crosno, “Literature Review

and Annotated Bibliography”). I continued to make these types of connections throughout my

literature review. Once this was completed, I was able to see the gap in the research, which led

me to further inquiry to see if my discourse community could help me to fill this gap.
Outcome 2

Through inquiry into discourse communities in the beginning of the semester, I found

that the most intriguing one I could study was my former baseball team. I believed researching

this community from the perspective of writing studies would make for an interesting challenge.

I knew immediately that I would have to rely heavily on the aspect of communication in the

community due to the lack of texts. So, I began with the research question “how does the quality

of communication within a team affect its ability to achieve its goals?” (Crosno, “Research

Proposal”). However, after beginning my research, I realized that the question needed to be

much more specific. I also noticed that many of the articles I found in my initial search had to do

with the effects of communication of the performance of athletes. I knew I wanted to use my

study to fill in a gap in my community rather than to continue the tradition, so I altered my

question to focus on the effects that communication can have on the individual’s mentality. From

here, I added in other factors that may affect the mentality, like trust, confidence, and

interpersonal relationships (Crosno, “Focused Data Analysis”).

With my initial research question on the athletes’ performances, I planned to do a textual

analysis of one of the few texts in the community, but when I altered my research question, my

methods changed (Crosno, “Research Proposal”). I decided that the best way to gauge the effects

on athletes’ mentalities would be to directly speak with the individuals that I would be studying.

Due to time constraints, I chose to interview two members of the community. I formulated

questions for the interviews throughout the semester. Initially, they followed my first research

question and were concentrated on performance, but they were revised accordingly for the new

focus of the study. Other revisions were made generally based on feedback from my peers and
professor, which had to do with connecting ideas back to the thesis and organizing ideas for

better fluidity throughout the paper.

Outcome 3

Analyzing data from interviews was an idea that I struggled to understand because of the

lack of quantifiable data that it offers. However, while conducting the interviews, I found it was

easy to see the themes that the athletes were presenting. Also, as I transcribed and read through

the dialogue, I was able to find more themes. Once they were turned into text, I performed a key

word analysis on terms that were significant for the study, like trust, confidence, and any term

that signified emotion (Crosno, “Academic Research Paper”).

This analysis helped me to formulate and support my arguments. I was able to use the

analysis of the key terms along with their context to find the correlations they had with each

other. I tried to simplify this by deciding whether a factor was positively or negatively correlated

with a player’s mentality.

I wanted my research to be meaningful to my community and the writing studies

community. For the writing studies community, I tried to turn a non-writing related topic into a

more relevant one by focusing on the aspects of communication in my community. I wanted to

fill in a gap in the research for both communities, and for my discourse community, I wanted the

findings of the study to be useful. I feel that this study could be expanded on and made more

useful in the sports world, especially for creating the conditions for optimal performance of

athletes (Crosno, “Academic Research Paper”).

Outcome 4

Throughout this course, my conception of writing and research has changed

tremendously. At the beginning of the course, I thought that writing was not a useful skill for me
to practice, and I believed it was not a skill that could be improved. Now, however, those ideas

have changed completely. I feel that this course, through the teaching and practice, have

drastically improved my writing skills. After going through the steps of the writing process, I

have understood the importance of revision, which I was not able to grasp before this course. I

also have realized that writing will be a useful skill as I continue my education and into my

career.

This course has also changed my conception of research from dreaded to exciting. In past

courses, I always feared our research assignments because I felt that I was never able to find

what I needed on the topic. Having the ability to independently research a topic of my interest in

this course allowed me to actually learn how to properly research. It helped me to realize that I

can find interesting aspects within assignments and courses that I initially thought were not

beneficial to me.

The concepts of argument as conversation and the CARS model were what interested and

motivated me most as a researcher. After learning about argument as conversation, I was able to

see researchers building off of one another’s works as I read through their articles. This had me

intrigued enough to where I was “falling down the rabbit hole” of the research, going from

source to source to try to find where the conversation started. The CARS model helped me to

understand how to analyze research. It helped me to implement the secondary source that I found

into my stance in the argument by showing where the conversation on the topic has been in prior

research (Crosno, “Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography”). From the first assignment

to the last, I feel that my knowledge of research and writing has grown significantly, which has

helped to improve my skills in both fields.