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Cierra Luna
Cover Letter 2015
Megan Malcom-Morgan
12/11/15
Freaks, geeks, murderers, and the all around grotesque.
English 220 opened my eyes to the cruel and creepy world around us. I spent my
time this semester reading genius poems, novellas, and stories dating as far back as the
700s. We studied the sexual innuendos, racism, and gender profiling that moved and
created these horrid stories, that make us jump in the night. My time spent during this
course helped me to better analyze the stories I read and piece together the authors
purpose and message. My first assignment, the literary analysis taught me to analyze the
mind of the monster and the monster within all of us, it taught me that pulling apart each
different aspect of a story, you can come to a different ending to the story and better
understand the meaning. Our research paper was used to teach that things we view
monstrous can just be misunderstood, mistreated, or casted as an outsider because of their
looks and or beliefs. These assignments helped me to read more carefully as well as to
take my time understanding and evaluating the situations characters are put into as well
as the characters them self. In my final project, a research website, I will piece together
my findings about pirates and present a visual aid to show how they are depicted in pop
culture and how oddly close they are related to the real life pirates.
Student Learning Outcomes:
This semester, during English 220, I worked on my creative writing skills through
the processing of analyzing different types of literature and different styles of writing. I

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followed the personal and department outcomes to improve my overall writing and
researching. These not only helped me to better structure my writing but to be a more
thorough and detailed. With completion of each of my assignments I was able to use the
student learning outcomes to better focus my writing and my analysis while still creating
voice and detail to support my topic. The skills I was taught in my freshman year
combined with the SLOs helped to carry me through my assignments and better my
writing skills.
Personal Outcomes
To expose students to cultural issues relating to horror and the monstrous and to foster
an appreciation for artistic endeavors in these areas.
This semester we read through stories about vampires, witches, the insane, the
perfectly sane but odd, and everything in between. We analyzed each story and pulled it
apart to find the deeper meaning. One of my favorite stories we read this semester was
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I did my literary analysis on this story. In class we read in
sections and unfolded the under lying messages found in the odd story. We found
sexualized thoughts, hints, we found the real mad man was not who he was seemed to be
and we pieced apart the mad man himself. This story specifically to me drew me into
English 220 even more because of its articulate horror and the constant twists thrown at
the audience. I was able to better analyze after this story and to look deeper into the
meaning of the stories we continued to read.
To hone critical thinking skills by examining patterns of thought in artistic works that
have shaped or that reflect our own cultures attitudes towards the monstrous
English 220 was organized by, types of monsters and horrors. This helped to
create a better understanding of how and why the monster was perceived as well as

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making it easier to compare the different styles of horror stories, writing by authors, and
messages. The structure of the class helped us to better understand the meaning we were
searching for and purpose of the authors writing. Personally the sections separated helped
me to piece together the true meaning of a monster as well as the horrid stereotypes
monsters in society were given.
To foster an ability to move beyond paraphrase to analysis of difficult texts; to encourage
students to interact with these texts, to think critically about them, and to see connections
between them, using writing as a tool
Our first assignment in 220 was to analyze a horror story of our choosing, from
our perspective. We were to make an argument for or against the accused monster in
the story then we gave textual evidence as to why we believed this true. Lecture and class
discussion was given as a start, as well as secondary sources ideas, and suggestions as to
the real meaning of the stories we chose. Some of the stories we read were writing very
differently and we had to piece apart what we thought the author was trying to say and
what the story was trying to portray. The second assignment we completed was a research
paper on a monstrous topic of our choosing, we were to explain their revolution and how
why they were considered a monster. The literary analysis set us up to be able to analyze
sources and come to conclusion about our theory about our own topic.
Department Outcomes
Find and Evaluate Information
Students will develop research strategies for their rhetorical situation, and then gather
information from primary and secondary sources; they will evaluate the sources for
quality, validity, and appropriateness for the rhetorical situation.
We used this Outcome most in our research website as well as the paper that our
final was based off of. English 110 and 120 both gave me the skills I needed to become a

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more opinionated and skillful writer. In both previous classes I was taught to use credible
and known sources to better support my thesis and to back up my points of argument. In
220 our sources became more specific and easier to identify with.
Compose Documents
Students will develop strategies for generating content, organizing it into a logical
structure, and otherwise shaping it to address the needs of their audience within
particular disciplines.
Our final assignment in English 220 was to create an informative but interactive
website displaying our research paper that was completed earlier in the semester. We used
primary and secondary sources to help validate and persuade our readers throughout the
research assignment and for the website we were to display our findings, opinions, and
research in a visual aid presentation. We were to bring together our creative ideas on our
monster topic as well as tying together all that we learned through the semester about
analysis and rhetoric.
Present Documents
Students will edit and revise their writing to provide clear meaning and coherent
structure; they will use effective document and paragraph structure, documentation and
genre conventions, and document design to create a rhetorically complete presentation.