Cover Letter

Before this course, I knew that I wanted to go into English Education as my major. Ever since I was little, I always loved to read and write in my free time and strived to broaden my “read books” selection, as well as improve my writing in general. When I entered college, I was truly excited to advance my writing and further my ability to express myself through it, and being in English 170 has helped me achieve this. Something I improved on in my writing was shying away from using colloquialisms in my essay’s constantly. Taking the course Writing and Rhetoric, I discovered that I use colloquialisms quite frequently in my writing, causing my words and phrases to be interpreted in a way that is not what I am trying to convey. I also began to understand I might have been using them as a way to connect my ideas and thoughts, but them being taken in the complete opposite direction. One aspect of writing that I greatly improved on during the semester was researching information and finding viable sources for my essays. In high school, the research papers I wrote were never expected to have sources that were truly reliable and specific to the topic I was discussing, so I never truly learnt how to do it. This course takes the student through each individual step of how to find reliable and smart sources. With this information, I began to use these skills and strategies to improve papers and research for all other classes, and will continue to do so throughout my college experience. 

In my portfolio, both my minor papers and my major assignment are about banned books and the controversy surrounding it. As someone who plans on becoming a secondary English teacher, this topic and assignment have greatly impacted the way I wish to teach my students. For example, before this course I was unaware that one of my favorite novels that I read for my English class in high school, 1984 by George Orwell, was banned in many places across the world including the United States. I couldn’t understand why, considering it is such a well-written and important work to read, until I wrote my first paper. Books are banned most of the time due to their suggestive language or sexual content, not because of the morals it is trying to teach. This made me realize that by being exposed to this book in high school, I only improved upon my ability to understand and interpret texts for what they are actually trying to represent, and not what’s necessarily happening on the side. Additionally, this realization demonstrated how children, especially high schoolers, are already exposed to language that is used in many great works, and reading them should not be taken away because of that. When entering college, I was expecting to write much more formally than I had previously in high school and write about more concrete situations and ideas, but this has since changed. Writing in college is about expressing your own ideas and opinions, without fear of being told you’re wrong (as long as you have the evidence, that is). College has helped me gain a better sense of voice and reason in my writing because it has allowed me to write and express myself the way I want to, encouraging me to want to do my best work. 

Two very important skills I have obtained about the writing process are outlining and editing. In high school, I had much more time to plan and outline my essays than I do in college. Adjusting to this meant I had to improve something about my writing process, and what seemed to take the most time to complete was the outline of the essay itself. I would try to map out more than I even planned to discuss in the essays I was writing, wasting time that could be spent improving my actual essay. I am now able to organize and layout my initial ideas and research in a thorough and thoughtful manner, resulting in more professional papers. Additionally, editing with my peers has not only helped me improve as a writer, but helped the students around me improve as well. By offering positive and constructive feedback to each other, we were all able to take those comments and improve the papers we were writing. Because of this, I would consider the overall organization and structure of my essays and paragraphs are the strongest parts of my writing skills right now. 

I have seen the improvement in the organization of my writing since past years and feel strong in the fact that my essays are always laid out in a way that makes sense to the audience. When writing my major assignment “Banned Books and Censorship”, I wanted to make sure the audience would understand the thesis of my essay regardless of whether or not they read the novel 1984 or not. By organizing my essay into specific sections and grouped ideas, I feel as though the reader can understand the point being made. An aspect of my writing that I believe can be improved is my language use, tone and word choice. Since entering college, I have been trying to expand and broaden my vocabulary, especially while writing, and always feel there’s room to grow in this area. There are always new or more interesting word choices and tone that I could be using that could make my writing that much better. 

One thing I wish we touched upon more, although we did briefly, was oral presentations and public speaking, as well as what is expected of us while giving presentations in the future. We did learn and discuss how to make power points and how to present strongly, I just personally believe I would have benefitted from another lesson or two on the subject. Overall, after taking this course I feel more prepared than I’ve ever been to continue writing in my college career and cannot wait to expand upon all that I’ve learnt even more. I enjoy how vocal and free college writing lets you be, as you can take the topic of an essay and morph it in whatever way appeals most to you, and I believe that only encourages students to write more.