Dr.

Leslie Bruce
Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics
California State University, Fullerton
P.O. Box 34080
Fullerton, CA 92834-9480

May 7, 2015

Dear Dr. Bruce,

This letter is written to inform and persuade you about what Ive accomplished
and improved on throughout the semester. Ive chosen to include 4 assignments
(including this cover letter) that will represent my progress. Included and in order to be
discussed are my original blog assignment (with a revised blog assignment), a Peer
review from you (as well as from Alejandro and my fellow classmates), and an annotated
bibliography assignment.
Starting with the third tab and fifth tab, I present to you my Original and Revised
blog posting. This assignment fulfills the 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th SLOs from the Portfolio
Decision Making Chart. Initially, when writing the blog, I was more focused on what
my product can do for people, rather than what the provided image of it actually makes
people think of. I had already satisfied the 1st SLO by writing informally, but my thesis
was not clearly stated, and I didnt know how to rewrite it in a way that would convey
what Im talking about. I decided to look more deeply into it by reading my entire blog
over and over, and noticed that all I did was talk about the labels on my product. My
initial thesis only talked about the benefits of the product, rather than what the image of
the product tried to get people to do via the labels. The problem with this was that my
original thesis had nothing to do with labels at all. My newly revised thesis includes and
summarizes what I actually planned to talk about throughout the blog, and thus fulfills
the requirement of the 4th SLO by having my thoughts more clearly organized.
Furthermore, I was able to recognize and evaluate my points clearly, which satisfies the
5th SLO of language and design. I finally addressed my focus and satisfied the 3rd SLO by
talking about what my provided images were trying to persuade people to think about and
do: Buying it after understanding the benefits of reading labels.
Next, it wasnt until I read your peer review on my blog, that it was clear to me
that something was wrong with my thesis. As for Alejandros peer review, and my other
fellow classmates comments, I was able to gather ideas for what my focus should be
about. I also fixed my poor usage of whos, and other small grammatical errors, to
improve diction and syntax. These modifications satisfy the 6th SLO, and I took my
readers comments to heart. Furthermore, Alejandro stated that I did not accurately
present to him my main ideas. He didnt know what I was talking about, or what my
picture was trying to get people to think. I realized that changing my thesis and giving it
more clarity allowed him to understand what my focus was. So, changing one little thing
made a huge difference for me.
Finally, in the last tab under More, I present to you my Annotated Bibliography,
which satisfies, the 2nd SLO of the Portfolio Chart. I used this assignment because I felt

that my Blog was lacking in the use of citations. This assignment contained multiple uses
of a variety of different sources, which fulfills the purpose of making ethical citations. I
utilized the IEEE citation format, which you have, on occasions in the past, mentioned its
efficiency. As a Physics major, I felt familiar with it so I was obliged to use it!
Overall, this Cover Letter was written to further emphasize any SLOs that I may
have not satisfied as strongly; such as writing to you formally in order to satisfy the
formal portion of the 1st SLO. It is also written to hopefully persuade you that I have
made significant improvements to my blog assignment and add support for the 3rd SLO.
Moreover, I have organized this in order to persuasively address a rhetorical situation,
and satisfy the 4th SLO. Thank you for reading this, and thank you for being my teacher.
Sincerely,
Dominic Trung Nguyen