10 December 2015

Dr. Leslie Bruce

Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics
California State University, Fullerton
P.O. Box 34080
Fullerton, CA 92834-9480
Dear Dr. Bruce,
The purpose of this letter is to demonstrate my understanding and full competence of the
student learning outcomes that we covered this semester. The included texts in my portfolio, that
I feel demonstrate I have achieved a highly formalized education of the SLOs, are: my cover
letter, an excerpt from my first writers notebook, and The Progress Report Memo. The original
versions and revised versions are also included in this portfolio to further demonstrate how much
I have developed as a technical writer. I arranged them as such, to illustrate that even until the
end of the semester, I have been improving all along. With the level of technical skill that I have
mastered, I feel confident at pursuing technical positions I otherwise might have not even
considered had I not taken this course and fulfilled every objective in the curriculum.
The first document that I included in the portfolio is this cover letter. Using my prowess
at persuading an audience or reader, this letter fulfills the SLO of persuasion and rhetorical focus.
The letter is supposed to be reflective and persuasive; the ability to grapple the dissemination of
information and the favored reception of your argument within a classroom-oriented audience. It
does a great job of showing how I am capable of articulating my speech in different settings,
writing effectively in formal and informal settings. My hopes were to write a letter that was
compelling enough, itd lead the reader into my portfolio with ease. The cover letter fulfills that
and also displays organization of thoughts and ideas in a methodical approach, which was crucial
this semester.
The second document is my major assignment, the Progress Report Memo, from our
iFixit project. The original draft for this portion of the assignment was constructed to meet the
minimum requirement. My group was so caught up with trying to figure out deadlines and
schedules that every answer to simple questions changed as fast as we were moving. As the
project manager, I should have been able to explicitly keep track and follow our progress. We
had finished our resume a while back, which made my memory forget formatting and
presentation of professional documents. Writing it out again, I revised the memo with your
comments and the peer review in mind, helping me present and format the information in the
best manner possible. The finished version looks polished and refined, meeting the SLOs of
ethically citing a source, collaborating with a group, language, design, and organization.
The third document to fulfill the one SLO which was left blank, is the rhetorical focus,
specifically, the variety of audience. I had not provided a document that reflects an efficacy at
speaking in different situations since my other documents only showed I could speak in a
classroom and in a professional, formal manner. I included an entry from my Writers Notebook
to attest to my competency at speaking in an informal and out-of-class setting. The Notebook

was particularly easy to compile since the writing was concise which polarized the other writings
we did in class and in our group projects. The inattention to detail displayed in the entry is a
weakness in my education that I think is rectified.
As confident as I am with my newly acquired technical writing skills, I am just as
confident that this cover letter covers every student learning outcome stated in the course
syllabus. I have improved since my first day in the classroom and my managerial weaknesses
will be corrected on any future projects I will be collaborating on.
Sincerely,
Edward Chacon