In this upload, share the link that collects your portfolio. The 100 points in this assignment are for the cover letter specifically. How to Make a Google Folder?
Cover Letter
In this cover letter—a genre of writing that places materials into context—you will walk me through your growth as a student, writer, and intellectual this semester. Aim to integrate or focus on showing me a learning outcome you’ve practiced this semester to do this.
Drawing upon course readings and your experience as evidence, name specific ideas and strategies you’ve worked with this semester in order to be an intellectual.
Guiding questions:
- What makes one an intellectual, according to our readings and your experience? (useful texts: Kendi’s speech, “Research Starts with a Thesis,” “Failure is Not an Option,” Baldwin’s writing advice, and “There is One Correct Way of Writing and Speaking.”
- What strategies, ideas, and values should a writer practice to do their very best work? (useful texts: “What is Critical Thinking,” “Procrastination,” “Responding—Really Responding to Student Writing,” “You Can Learn to Write in General,” “Good Writers Don’t Need Revision,” and “Rhetorical Reading.” You can, of course, consult any texts you find valuable. As I’m sure you see, these questions and their texts overlap, as well.
Genre conventions: a letter is a genre, with its own conventions (moves or expectations, per Thonney in “Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse”). What makes a letter a letter are its salutation, its farewell address, and its tone/word choices reflecting a specific intended audience. Write with purpose, showing me why you’re writing and what your letter intends to accomplish. That will be your intro paragraph. Walk me through your reading, writing, and thinking to answer the two guiding questions above in the body of the letter, and close by considering what you’ll still aim to improve upon and what you look forward to in your next semesters. This is our farewell to one another, so close with a send-off.
Requirements: three pages of writing minimum, which integrates a variety of our readings throughout the semester, four minimum, used carefully and intentionally. Demonstrate critical thinking about their contribution to your development as an intellectual as well as effective integration strategies. Show me you can write with and cite sources.
Our learning goals: lectures, activities, reading, and writing centered on these. They sound more intimidating than they are.
Goal #1: Develop awareness of how communities shape reading, writing, and research. Learning Outcomes: • Analyze and evaluate how communities and purposes influence writer’s rhetorical choices. • Understand genre conventions and examine how reading and writing are situational and contextual. • Develop critical reading skills and internalize and apply a variety of effective reading, writing and study strategies.
Goal #2: Explore a writer’s identity in relation to the politics of language. Learning Outcomes: • Contribute to discussions about how language and culture influence reading and writing. • Examine and analyze how language influences the writer’s identity.
Goal #3: Engage in reflective and metacognitive processes. Learning Outcomes: • Practice self-assessment and revision in order to improve reading, writing, and research processes. • Monitor and adjust processes of reading and writing. • Provide, receive, and incorporate peer feedback.
Goal #4: Compose rhetorically effective texts, informally and formally, in a variety of mediums or genres. Learning Outcomes: • Demonstrate flexible strategies for generating, drafting, revising, and editing. • Write organized texts with controlling ideas that respond to multiple rhetorical situations. • Summarize, analyze, evaluate, integrate, and cite sources. • Apply appropriate writing conventions. • Display evidence of editing, control of grammar, and sentence variety.
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