Dear Dr.

Bruce,
During the course of this class over the semester, I have improved in various aspects of
my writing ability. These aspects that we covered during our course are Student Learning
Outcomes, or SLOs, and are a list of skills that we must develop in order to become better
writers. Throughout this course, we have been encouraged to take on various projects with
various goals for improvement and I believe these projects have pushed me on the right road for
improvement. To display my improvements in these learning outcomes, I have included my
revised review article and peer reviews to and from two students; both of which will provide
ample evidence to my improvement in the SLOs being taught to us in class. In addition, I believe
this Cover Letter by itself provides evidence of my improvement in a few SLOs as well.
The first text in question is a revised version of my review article due to it covering a
number of the SLOs present for our class. Being a review article, this text covers SLO 2, Ethical
Citation. I was required to cite 6 scholarly sources in order to provide a source as to where I got
the information for each of my claims. An example of this was a citation I made to an article
discussing the study of John Ostrom; the progenitor theory to all of the studies to come relating
to the connection between theropod dinosaurs and modern birds. For SLO 1, Rhetorical Focus, I
wrote the paper in accordance to the guidelines I found for The American Biology Teacher
online, writing it in a conversational tone whenever possible and writing it for a general audience
with some basic knowledge on the topic at hand. This also covers for SLO 5, since I used
language that was formal and scientific while also writing it with the audience in mind. This is
displayed by me citing various sources in a proper manner to show where I got my research from
and to whom the info I covered in the paper belonged to. It shows improvement in SLO 4,
Organization, in that I broke up the review article into various sections depending on what was

being discussed within them. Although, as I look back on the paper, I believe some
improvements could be made on the organization of facts within each section as at times the
facts felt like they appeared abruptly in the paper.
The second text included in this portfolio are a series of peer reviews that I both received
and gave to two other students in order to revise my cover letter. These documents cover the 6th
SLO, Collaboration, in that all three of us had to coordinate through email by sending our cover
letters to one another, give feedback on the others work and then email it back to be posted
online. For SLO 4, I tried to keep my peer reviews concise and easy to understand for the person
I was reviewing, providing feedback and proficiencies that I found throughout the text.
This cover letter also serves as a third document that shows my improvement in a few
SLOs as well. This cover letter covers SLO 3 of Persuasion since it is meant to justify the
inclusion of each of these documents and persuasive of the improvements I have made. For SLO
1 and 5, I aimed this document towards yourself, my professor, and as such wrote it in a formal
manner using appropriate language for the intended audience. It displays SLO 4 in that I
organized my thoughts into an introduction as well as three sections for each document.
Admittedly, there are some improvements that could be made here as well since balancing
writing this as a personal letter in first person while being formal can lead to some
inconsistencies in tone and structure.
Overall, this ENG 363 class has helped me greatly in improving my writing skills and I
feel that I am in a good place when it comes to my writing ability. While I am nowhere near
mastering these skills and I have a long way to go before anything I write is published for the
general public, I say I am in a much better place and will be there with enough time and practice.
And I am willing to take on those projects to come in order to keep improving my skills.

Sincerely,
Vincent Rivera