August 6, 2010

English Department
NDSU – Dept.2320
Fargo, ND 58108-6050

Dear Assessment Readers:

In this electronic portfolio, I’ve included two course assignments and an individual project for
English 320, Business and Professional Writing. First item is a job application assignment that
includes cover letter, designer resume, scannable resume and text file resume for a job opening
for University of Wisconsin Extension Program. Second item is an employee recommendation
report of selection of three job offers for my classmate Chris Haroldson, along with its
transmittal letter. Third item is an individual class project that I worked on creating a guideline
for Business Continuity Plan, including project proposal, progress report and the actual guideline
I’ve created.

Among these works, I feel the job application assignment shows my best performance for this
course. Since it was the first assignment for the class, it was fairly easy for me as a non-native
English speaker to follow instructions and format to create each type of resume. Also, it didn’t
require a lot of writing so it turned out to have less grammatical mistakes and poorly organized
structures. However, revisions are necessary for all of my works in terms of minor errors in word
use, typos and grammars, which are common mistakes of international students. More careful
proofreading is needed to improve the quality of my communication and to develop
professionalism. For the job application assignment, if I put more logical reasons explaining how
and why can my knowledge and skills be valuable to the employer when I mention that my skills
will be valuable to them. With the revision, the persuasiveness of my points would be more
effective.

In the employee recommendation report, I could improve a lot in an organizing the report itself
and interpreting the data to find connection of the job offers with the client. Some paragraphs
missed statements of transition that lead to next section, so adding more transition sentences will
make it better organized and reader friendly. Regarding to interpretations of data, I could
improve by including sentences explaining connections of the client’s needs and goals for his
career with the data of each job offer. Although I discussed about it in Comparison section, it
will be better to include brief paragraph describing the interpretations at the end of each
employer’s review.

Through these assignments and the feedback I’ve got from Miss Enger and my classmates,
although my skills are not perfect yet, I grasped the general ideas of professional and business
writing. Understanding the formats of business letter, cover letter, recommendation report and
proposal will be critically important. Especially, incorporating various information and
knowledge to create persuasive communications through the individual project was very
beneficial for me. As an international student, I’m aware of the importance of learning language
is to keep studying and using it. I will keep in mind that the knowledge and experiences I gained
throughout this course will become beneficial only if I keep writing and utilizing them in the
future, otherwise they will be rusted. It was very challenging course, but I enjoyed learning new
things, which was especially beneficial for my future career. I would like to thank Miss Enger,
English Department, NDSU and the United States for every opportunity and experiences as an
international student.

Sincerely,

Takashi Tsuda