Jared Zucker
Eng 102-7891
29 Nov. 2007
WP4 Draft
Reflective Cover Letter
Taking all the past deadlines into consideration, I can definitely show that my strength has a writer has done nothing but improve. I have learned a lot in this class, including organizational skills and being effective in research.
The first course outcome included writing “for specific rhetorical contexts”, which also included things like purpose and audience. In Deadline 3, Homework Assignment 3, I had to create a search plan for my ultimate research question. By doing this it helped me narrow down my audience and my topic.
The second course outcome included organizing my writing to support my main research question. Writing Project #2, the Annotated Bibliography helped with this tremendously. It helped me organize all of my sources, especially for both sides of the argument. I was able to brainstorm with ideas even while organizing all of these because I had such a plentiful amount of resources.
Having to use a proper tone, diction and grammar consistently was the third course outcome. Almost all of the writing assignments had key elements relating to each of those. Every grammar assignment helped work towards that, showing the growth of writing. For instance, I had a hard time with transitioning one paragraph to the next to keep a constant flow. Using The Owl at Purdue as one of my resources, I was able to learn how to make my paragraphs connect and link together better by writing better transitions.
The forth, evaluating both online and print sources. I prefer online research much more than print sources, just because the ease of access and effectiveness of it. However, you can usually trust a book that is in a library and give it credibility. This is not the same for the Internet. You really have to examine the websites and online journals you are puling research from, because it is not always valuable or truthful information. Writing Project #2, the Annotated Bibliography, is evidence of research I have conducted using the Internet, such as online databases and directories, and also actual book research.
The fifth outcome was to integrate different sources to develop my own ideas. I was to do this by taking someone else’s writing and turning it into my own, like summarizing or paraphrasing. Throughout all of the reading reflections and different writing projects one can see my citations in MLA format. This can sometimes be difficult to do, especially when pulling a lot of statistics from one source, but I have definitely learned a lot about MLA format and plagiarism by Writing Project #3 alone.
Number six refers to using proper MLA-style formatting, which was the required format for this class. It was a little tricky for me at first, with citing my sources. However, by the time Writing Project 2, the Annotated Bibliography came around, I was able to cite all of my sources properly as proven by the instructor’s critique.
Peer reviewing was the seventh course outcome. I love peer reviewing, mostly because I love opinions and suggestions on my writing. I am no where near a perfect writer, and when I can get any input on my writing I really enjoy it, because I can only grow more as a writer from it. Comparing my drafts of my writing projects to the finals you can see the changes I made because of helpful peer reviewing.
We then had to assess our own strengths in writing, which was the eight outcome. Having the instructor critique my different writing projects, I was able to learn from my mistakes, especially with MLA formatting. Most of the corrections and/or suggestions always made to me were to fix my MLA. I think I definitely was able to grasp MLA a lot better thanks to all the feedback which helped me grow as a writer. In my different deadline and writing project reflections, I also show this and other areas of where I was improving.
Number nine was use technology to assist us with the entire class. Being in the technology field already, I was not too worried about this. However, after having to use some technology I never really touched on, like Google Docs, I was able to learn a lot. Google Docs is an amazing tool because of how you can distribute and share it to anyone, and its ability to handle live editing from each shared user. This is a great piece of technology and I plan to use it in the future, for both work and school as I progress.
