Cover Letter

Jillian Gustafson

Mrs. Tetterton

English 1200-50

26 April 2010

Cover Letter

At the beginning of the semester, my first assignment for the class was to reflect on previous writing experiences and talk about my strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I responded to this assignment by saying I wanted to become a more organized and creative writer and I believe I have done just that. I have more confidence in myself making it easier for me to be able to translate all the ideas I have in my head onto paper. In previous papers I used to do a lot of “data dumping,” stringing one citation after another. After lots of practice, I now find it much easier to put information from a source into my paper while backing up the information with my own words and ideas and not relying on other authors ideas and information to form my paper.

Using what I have learned throughout the semester I chose to make multiple revisions to project one, my research paper on whaling. On several occasions some points in my paper were vague and some paragraphs ended abruptly. I went back and explained in more depth the in-text citations. By doing this I got rid of the citation string I had throughout paragraph number six. To the paragraphs that ended abruptly, I added information to back up the point and also a transition into the next paragraph. I re-worked my introduction significantly to tighten my narrative and listed specific solutions to end whaling. Also in the introduction, I reworked some sentences to get rid of choppiness and make my thesis clearer. Overall, I think my revised project one is very solid and shows my growth as a writer.