Adamaris Duran 

Professor Toohney 

ENG 170-32

Reflective Cover Letter 

3 May 2024

                                                     “Reflective Cover Letter” 

Initially, although I loved reading books and novels, I had a certain dislike for writing. This was mainly because I found writing to be boring and lacked any passion for it. Therefore, when it came to my writing skills, I didn’t feel as if they were the best because I always felt as if I was lacking something in them. Throughout the Writing and Rhetoric class, I was able to learn many new ways to improve my writing. 

This class has taught me many skills that I will be able to utilize in other classes. The main skills are tips on how to keep eye contact with an audience while presenting, which is something I can use for any future presentations. And the many types of fallacies that exist can help me in any future argumentative papers or debates that I have to do for other classes. The visual memoirs that we were assigned to do for the class really helped develop my analyzing skills a lot. They taught me how to look beyond what is just there in front of me and think about what the artist’s purpose is, as well as how they managed to convey it. I would be able to use these skills in my future career because my career involves working with people; therefore, I would be able to analyze people better and see how they present themselves, which has to do with their personality. I would be paying more attention to the little details, such as how they dress or what habits they may have, which would be able to tell me more about the person. Additionally, I learned that although college readings may be boring at times, that doesn’t always have to be the case, and they can be enjoyable from time to time, such as when I read “The Everything Box” by Richard Kadrey, which was a novel that I enjoyed reading from beginning to end. 

Before college, I never heard about having a writing process; therefore, when it was mentioned during class, I didn’t know what it meant and thought it was useless and wouldn’t be able to improve my writing skills. However, when the argumentative essay was assigned, I decided to give it a try. I sat down and decided that my writing process would consist of creating an outline of my essay that would have my theses, then my topic sentence for each paragraph, and under those topic sentences would be a list of examples that I wish to include to support it. After that, I would write one paragraph per day, and a day before the assignment was due, I would read through it about three times to make sure that not only was everything coherent and flowing smoothly, but also to fix any mistakes that I may not have noticed during the time. After creating this writing process for myself, I found that it was very useful to have one since, with this new one I created, I was able to decrease the amount of time I got distracted while doing the assignment. 

Currently, I consider some of my writing strengths to be creating a good thesis and being able to support it with good descriptions, evidence, and explanations of examples that I use. The thesis I write is a great strength of mine because in the introduction paragraph, it is always clear to see what is supposed to be my thesis sentence, and throughout my writing, I never lost sight of what my thesis was or how to best support it. However, one area that needs more growth in my writing is my citations. I am still trying to get the hang of how block quotes work and how to cite other sources of media, such as newspapers and video clips. 

Upon completing this course, I feel as though I am sufficiently prepared regarding college writing expectations and other professional contexts. Additionally, I feel as though my writing has severely improved from what it was at the beginning. One thing that I improved on was using “I” less frequently, unless it was important. I feel as though this improvement made my papers sound more sophisticated. Apart from that, I am able to feel more confident in my writing abilities and have come to realize that writing doesn’t always have to be something to stress about; instead, it could be a leisurely activity if done right, such as the journals that we had to do for “The Everything Box.”.

After completing various research assignments this semester, such as the argumentative essay and the research paper, I feel confident in my developing research practices. Throughout this semester, the most difficult skill related to the research process was being able to identify when a source was reliable and how to properly use quotations. This is because I had trouble properly citing articles, video clips, and newspapers and identifying when to use block quotes. Additionally, when it came to identifying when a source is reliable, I learned that even if it ends in.org, it doesn’t always mean it’s reliable, which is something that I was always taught. However, I feel as though I am better at identifying reliable sources now, thanks to the in-person library instructional session. This session helped in being able to identify where to find reliable sources through the use of the library database, which made the process easier.