Cover Letter

Reflective Cover Letter
Draft 1

The past semester has been more than helpful in helping me to develop my writing. My portfolio for this semester will contain my Proposal Essay, News Story, Application Essay, and my “This I Believe” piece. All have developed from draft to draft. Although some started out better than others, they all seem to have answered their individual prompts, and give good evidence to support it. Most of all I am choosing these papers because they all started out in different ways and they had different problems that needed to be fixed.

The proposal asked you to write a piece on something you would like to change that is local. Then recommend a way to change it. The News Story asked you to write a news story for a local paper that explains about a local event. For the application essay I needed to write an essay to a college or university of my choice, an answer their essay question for applying to their school. Finally the “This I Believe” piece asked you to explain a belief you have with details as to why you have that belief.

For the Proposal I had small problems with the transitions, so after I had fixed the transitions I changed my conclusion to better some up the paper. In the News Story I had to take away some of the information that made it seem like it had a personal feel, but overall it was on topic and had very solid transitions, and a good clear thesis. The Application essay was my best or one of my best first drafts. I spent the most time on this paper because I plan on using it to apply to that school this year. That paper was very necessary to get the feedback I did, especially in the peer review which helped me discover that it was actually off topic from the actual question. Also your comment on my blog pointed that out as well. However, my “This I Believe” paper was my worst first draft. The transitions were awful, I chose some bad examples to support my belief, and the paper had no flow at all. The peer review helped me establish a flow in the paper and by the final draft I worked in some good transition, and better examples.

As the semester is quickly coming to an end I notice that when I have written my more recent papers, I tend to look for things like flow, transitions, and things like does it answer the question? Before this class when I would look over a draft all I would find is grammar and punctuation mistakes. Overall I think I have developed my writing ability, and hope to keep doing so.