Anna Wickiser 

Brooke Lundgren

English 160

12/12/22

Cover Letter

To whom it may concern, 

When I started this course I did not think about writing, I did it. I wouldn’t get really deep into what I would put on the paper. I never really looked at an essay I wrote in high school and felt anything, or was proud when I finished. I only ever felt like it was a task that I had finally gotten done with. I didn’t ever have a brainstorming process or an outline I would just get it done. Now that I have taken this course I have changed all of that. I think more about what I am putting onto my paper, when I finish a paper or an essay I see it as an accomplishment rather than a chore I don’t need to do anymore, and I have a brainstorming process where I make an outline before I start my papers. 

I feel like I have a better structure and organization for my essays now. They make more sense and are more powerful in that way. I’ve developed my ability to smoothly change into each new paragraph to create a flow to the paper which creates overall structure and organization. I create this flow between paragraphs by finding parallels and similarities in each of the topics I am switching to. I have felt like I have always had this as a skill but after this class, it is an even better skill that I have. I can use it in the future with Writing and Rhetoric next semester when I will be writing more research and argumentative essays. 

I also know my audience better. Before I would write to myself which is okay sometimes, but I never really thought of the person reading my writing and how they would feel or take it. Now I keep the audience in mind and change the tone of the essay or writing depending on who the audience is. I can use this skill in any class that will have any sort of writing in it. I will be able to change the tone of the writing or essay to match the topic or class that the writing will be for. 

There are a few essays that I would like to add more structure and organization to. I feel like I didn’t find enough parallels and similarities in the topics I talked about in certain essays. The topics that I picked for the essays have many parallels in them that I have missed, and I would want to go back to find and add or fix those. I also would use better ethical citations. I have noticed that I didn’t do some citations properly, such as the order I put things on my work cited page, or I didn’t italicize correctly or put the sources in alphabetical order. I would go back and fix that to be as ethical as I possibly can be. 

Having a large audience see my work beyond just my professor definitely made me more careful and made me take my time with topics. It also gave me the chance to expand how I write to a large audience. This process made me a harsher self-critic overall and more understanding of others and how they write and reach out to large audiences. This also prepared me for the future when I will be having large audiences reading my work and not just the professor. The fact that large audiences will be able to see my work makes me better prepared for college-level writing and gets me more comfortable with professional-level writing. 

I feel prepared to go into English 170 writing and rhetoric and to write argumentative research essays. With the last assignment, I really opened up to how to take in ideas and how to create a strong structure for a research essay. It also showed me how a research essay should look and sound. I feel like I’m prepared to create essays on many different topics in Writing and Rhetoric next semester. 

I have a long way to go before I feel completely prepared for professional writing but I definitely feel prepared for college-level writing and more comfortable with professional-level writing. I feel like my writing style has matured out of high school essays into college-level of writing. This happened through my better understanding of structure and parallels in the essay, and a better understanding of the topic overall, and I better understand all of these topics because of the English 160 course this semester. 

I used this class and all of the techniques I have learned in my other classes such as Introduction to Psychology, and American Government and Politics. In my Introduction to Psychology class, I had an essay in that I used many of the techniques I learned in English 160. I used an outline to start the essay off, then I found parallels in the different topics I was writing about and found ways to connect the topics to create a strong essay with a flow to it. I will use the same techniques in my American Government and Politics final where I will need to write an essay on a political topic. I will need to research and I will use the strategies we have learned in class to find reputable sources that I can trust. I will also use what we had learned about citations in this essay too. 

Overall I have become a much stronger writer this semester due to English 160. With smoother transitions more parallels and a better understanding of who I’m writing to, I feel more confident turning in papers and I feel more confident writing, in general. I feel prepared for English 170 Writing and Rhetoric next semester, and I feel prepared for any other college-level writing that I may come across. 

Sincerely,

Anna Wickiser