Cover Letter

Nick Last Name

English 1

Dr. D

Cover Letter

            For the portfolio I am writing I will be having 3 sections not including this one. The first section will be the Writing Revision. For this part it’s going to lead in to the next section swiftly hopefully. On it I’m aiming to be able to talk about most if not all my major English papers and other assignments in time order and discuss what I did badly and good on each. I will most probably start out naming more negatives on my earlier work and more positives and improvements on my later work while still trying to keep a good balance of each on everything. This is only the beginning of this part though. The real main point of the writing revision is to pick one single out of all those assignments and to revise it. I do this based on comments made from my peers or teachers or maybe even something I didn’t feel was the best way to write my paper like and I state the improvements and maybe rewrite things and other stuff. The things I mainly focus on for the essay I will be revising, which is my Literacy Narrative, is my wording and organization. I feel as though on that paper I wasted too much time writing about events that happened in my life and describing it rather than what has to do with writing.

            After this we would move onto to Writing Remix which is sort of like the Writing Revision however it is taking what I commented on and rewriting it to improve the mistakes but it’s written in a different style or genre. I’ll be remixing my Literacy Narrative like I’ve said before and I will be writing it in a more “talking to someone you know well” type essay rather than like I did before when I knew it was being graded. Although I usually don’t talk to people in long essay formations I will still be trying to give an interview but as more of something I was asked to give a long explanation and analysis for. But I’ll still be trying to write as I would to a person who doesn’t look down upon me but instead equally.

            Then when that part is over I will go onto the Hits and Misses part of the portfolio. I’ll give more than just two of each of these. I feel like there was a lot I really didn’t do good on in the beginning of the year but there are still some good hits with these, such as I was always honest when I wrote things for a grade and always feel like I shouldn’t lie when writing something. Other than that I still have misses like how I always turned in late work and couldn’t ever talk about a variety of things like how now I could talk about all sorts of things but right now I don’t have that chance like before but on this paper I’m going to try to write much more different things.

            Now that I’ve hit that note I can say that now I can let my imagination do the best of itself on my papers. Now I see myself as a better writer for schoolwork. I can’t say I’ve improved to the point where I can write well enough to get a perfect grade in English but I’m certainly better. As a writer now I’m trying to listen to what my teacher says and what other sources say about my drafts on things and I try to turn them in on time. I feel much more motivated now then I was before but that’s probably because of how horribly I was doing in English before. Now I’m at the point where if I don’t get a good grade on everything it will really affect me and make it harder for me to pull up those grades. I feel much more limited on how much I can slack off on these things. If I didn’t feel that way I really don’t think I could pass so I have to do the best I can in the time I’m given whether I want to or not.

            I have learned much about myself as a writer but that will be in my revision. The reason I don’t think I should write it here is because it’s not from school that I’ve learned about myself. As of my writing for what we are learning this year and are graded on I don’t think I’ve learned much about myself but rather more on how to put a paper together. The things we do in school aren’t personal but it’s more about writing about what you’ve learned and how to use it. I have gained much strength in writing in a more formal style such as writing in a correct format. That and how to use sources for research. At first when I was asked to give quotes and show backup for the information I had gained I had no idea what to do but as time went on I got a whole lot more used to it. I feel like I can transition into those things to back up my work much better and it sounds a whole lot better.

            The strengths I think I have as a writer revolve around those things as well as I have a lot of experience with writing and learning different things is easy for me and I can get used to them; however, a downside to that is that those things are hard to use with how I write so I have difficult at times on writing formally. This is especially hard for me when I have to write long papers that have more space than I need to hold the small amounts of information I have to show. That leads to yet another negative which I feel as if I am using write now that is run on sentences. I think I’ve improved on those anyway. It’s just that at first I had a horrible habit and now I think I only make run on sentences when I find them necessary.

            So you could say something I have improved on this year as a writer is run on sentences and I’ve been trying to use them less frequently. I’ve improved greatly on using evidence to back up what I have and I’ve improved on taking information and making something out of it. Pretty much all throughout the year I have been given books or a subject or sources to make something out of whether it be a thesis or analysis. So I think I’ve gotten better in the “write an encyclopedia or magazine article” realm rather than the “write a story in the style of Shakespeare” realm. This leads me to word choice. I think I’ve somewhat improved on that but the reason I said it leads me to it is I’m not sure if I’m using the word “realm” correctly or not.

            Either way I’m sure that next year I’ll be able to write better on my assignments or at least try to get them in on time. That’s another thing that makes my school writing not as good as I could make it; I always seem to have limited time to turn something in and half the time I’m more worried about getting a good grade rather than the paper being interesting to me. That’s only somewhat what my problem is now but this is going to be in on time unlike my past paper where I’m not even sure what I have and have not done. Overall I think what I really need to improve on is getting more information to write about and turning in those things on time. Other than that I think my writing has been improving simply from experience so there’s really not much I personally think I should change.