Cover Letter

For the research essay I was required to choose the most important idea that was
developed in this course. In the essay I argued that the most important concept was awareness of
the rhetorical situation. Doing this assignment allowed me to meet a course goal, compose
rhetorically effective texts, informally and formally, in a variety of mediums or genres.
By doing this assignment I completed most of the learning outcomes from this goal
which are demonstrating flexible strategies for drafting, writing an organized text that responds
to multiple rhetorical situations, summarizing, analyzing, evaluating, integrating, citing sources,
and displaying evidence of editing. For this essay I completed multiple drafts with the help of
peer reviews. Doing multiple drafts has helped me better organize my essay and allowed me to
fix any grammar or spelling mistakes. In addition, since this assignment was a research essay, I
was required to use sources and data from it to make my claim stronger. The sources that I used
were articles from Writing about Writing which are Rhetorical Situations and Their
Constituents and Activity Theory: An Introduction for the Writing Classroom.
Using quotes from these articles required me to analyze them in order to make my claim
stronger. Also, using quotes required me to integrate them by using brackets in order for my
essay to flow. In addition, this assignment required me to cite my sources since I used one
outside source from a online website. By doing this assignment I also displayed evidence of
editing which can be seen throughout my drafts. For example, in my drafts I fixed many
grammar mistakes and a major part that I edited was my conclusion.
After writing this essay, something that I learned about myself as a writer is that this
course has actually helped me develop my writing skills. In this assignment I argued that the
most important concept learned in this course was the rhetorical situation. Before taking this
course was not aware of the rhetorical situation (exigence, rhetor, audience, and constraints) and
now I know the importance of it so I plan on looking out for these things when writing. In
addition, something else that Ive learned about myself as a writer is that using the PIE (point,
information, explanation) outline really is helpful in writing a better essay. In my previous essays
my peers had more questions and were more confused on my writing. In contrast, for this essay
they had more comments on how the essay flows well and that I made good points.
Something I think went well for this essay was how I organized it, given that I used the
PIE outline format. For this essay I believe I have a well-developed thesis and all of my topic
sentence relate to thesis. In addition, I believe that the quotes that I choose tie back to the topic
sentences which makes the essay easier to understand. Overall I think I did pretty well for this
essay, but if there is something that I can improve on is analyzing the quotes. After seeing the
benefits of the PIE format, this format or something similar to it is something I plan to use for
my future writing assignments.
I believe that this essay is ready for the eportfolio because throughout my draft my peers
and I didn't really many things that can be improved. I believe this essay is ready for the
eportfolio because I didn't have to make any major edits besides grammar or spelling mistakes. I
found multiple grammar mistakes and have fixed them, so I believe this essay is ready for the
eportfolio.