December 8, 2016

Dr. Leslie Bruce

California State University of Fullerton, English Department
800 N State College Blvd
Fullerton, CA 92831
University Hall 435

Dear Dr. Bruce,

It has been my dream to do research since I took my first psychology course during
freshman year. Because of this, it has been my goal to hone my writing skills for the sciences.
While a majority of science writing surrounds journal and news articles, technical writing skills
are required to write guides and manuals for various research procedures. To track my
improvement in technical writing, the syllabus outlines six student learning outcomes (SLOs).
According to these SLOs, I have improved my writing technique through different assignments
over the course of the semester. To provide evidence for this claim, I have compiled a portfolio
of documents containing my previous work. This cover letter is a guide through these documents
to indicate the various SLOs they have mastered.
I chose to include the iFixit proposal because it encompasses a majority of the SLOs.
This document was written to persuade you and the iFixit technicians to allow us to begin our
device replacement guides (SLO 3). For example, we commented on the device's popularity and
the lack of guides published on iFixit to persuade them to let us begin working. However, within
the document as a whole, there is a clear understanding of rhetorical focus through the use of

formal language to persuade the iFixit technicians about the need for guides on the Dell Inspiron
14z 5423 (SLO 1). For example, most of the guides are confusing and hard to followforcing a
user to search through various sections (Wheeler, 2016). Guidelines from you and iFixit
surrounding the formatting of links, the informal way potential issues needed to be written, and
the use of headings such as abstract, introduction, and project description were also strictly
followed which shows attention to the audience. Additionally, this document uses in-text APA
citations to cite guides hosted on various websites (SLO 2). For example, we cited the Dells
Owner Manual in this document to describe how difficult their guides were to follow and to
identify how we would improve upon our own guides. SLO 5 is demonstrated because language
and design are used effectively to create a memo similar to the ones found in Markels (2016)
textbook. For example, California State University of Fullerton's address was included along
with the date. Lastly, SLO 6 is clearly demonstrated because this document was created by the
Dell Droids team. Our team was able to edit this document together both in and out-of-class in
real time using Google docs (SLO 1). We were able to read and analyze each others ideas for
different guides and provide suggestions to improve our proposal.
In this portfolio, I also included a peer review of the proposal that has been done for our
team as well as one we performed on another team. On September 28th, Dell Droids collaborated
verbally to peer review Tech No Logics proposal while they performed on us (SLO 6). These
peer reviews are informal documents that were performed in class as a team to improve both our
own and our peers writing (SLO 1). For example, our informality is displayed when we stated
that they had good background information and very convincing but that they were missing
the subject line. Overall, this document displays evidence of SLO 1 and 6.

Lastly, this letter fulfills SLOs 1, 3, 4, and 5. This is a formal directed towards you as
my audience. This letter's goal is to persuade you that I have accomplished all of the SLOs (SLO
1 and 3). This persuasiveness is achieved by using well-constructed arguments that contain both
claims and evidence as shown by the multiple examples above. Additionally, the letter is
carefully organized by document and the various SLOs that are satisfied by it to increase
understanding of my argument (SLO 4). Therefore, not only does this document satisfy the
principles of rhetoric by showing my capability to write for various audiences and purposes
(SLO 1 and 3), it also further demonstrates my ability to organize a document and utilize
language concisely to portray a message (SLO 4 and 5). From this, I conclude that I have met all
six SLOs.
These previous assignments significantly improved my writing ability to be more
competent in adapting my writing for various purposes and audiences. The constant practice
during in-class activities and routine collaboration had led to this development. However, there
are still weaknesses that must be addressed. Conciseness and clarity are a challenge since writing
is long-winded which can cause problems in understanding. It was my goal during my proposal
revision to be more concise. However, this is something I need to work on continuously. With
this in mind, I hope these documents depict my progress in technical writing and that you see the
same improvements I have. I believe my writing can only get better as I continue to work on
being clearer and more concise in my writing style.
Sincerely,
Brittany Wheeler