Preparing Your Portfolio: Cover Letter

1. Preparing Your Portfolio: Cover Letter Part of the Gavilan Writing Center Workshop Series

2. What is a Cover Letter? The cover letter is the introduction to your collection of writing. This is the first impression you are making on your reader. The cover letter should discuss and reflect upon the revised work that appears in your portfolio. The cover letter also allows you to discuss your writing, your experiences as a writer, and/or your writing process.

3. Things to Consider • Audience & Purpose • Who are you writing the cover letter for? • Why are you writing it? • Essays in Your Portfolio • What essays will you include in your portfolio? • How will these influence your cover letter?

4. What have you learned about writing in this class? Lower-level Concerns Higher-level Concerns

5. Try It Now • Write down what you’ve learned in the class. • Be specific. Use examples. • Papers you’ve written • Specific Assignments

6. What should I put in my Cover Letter? Some possible areas of exploration might include: • What you have learned through revising your essays. • Your motivations for including particular essays into the portfolio. • What challenges you face/have faced as a writer and how you have learned to overcome/deal with them. • What you feel are your greatest strengths as a writer and how this portfolio reflects those. • What you feel unified the work. • How your writing demonstrates the diversity of expression that is within you.

7. What Should the Cover Letter Look Like? The cover letter should: • be formatted like a letter. • be single spaced. • have standard paragraph indentions. • be no longer than one page. • be addressed to your audience. • have several paragraphs. May 8, 2013 English Department Gavilan College Dear Committee Members, In English 250, I have learned many valuable skills. I have learned to make outlines to organize my ideas, write strong thesis statements, and to support my ideas with evidence to make a better argument. When I began this class, I thought outlines were just for jotting down ideas. I had no idea I could use them to revise a draft I had already written. But the essay, “Don’t Blame TV,” I included in this portfolio got much stronger… Sincerely, #999999

8. Organizing the Cover Letter • How will you organize your cover letter? • Basic things you need to have: • Introduction, body, closing • Discuss higher-level concerns • Discuss specific examples from the essays in your portfolio as evidence • The rest is up to you! • Invest some time in writing the cover letter—make it sound like you.

9. Brainstorming for the Cover Letter(1 of 2) What were your goals when you first came to Gavilan? What did you want to get out of this class in particular? What are your biggest challenges with school this semester, and with academic reading and writing in particular? Think about challenges in life as well as in school. How have you addressed or overcome those challenges or barriers?

10. Brainstorming for the Cover Letter(2 of 2) What changes have you noticed in your reading and writing this semester? Have you improved? In what ways? Has your attitude about academic reading and writing changed at all? How? What do you feel you want to work on as you progress through the English classes at Gavilan? Do you feel ready for the next level of English? Why or why not? What is your next step with school? Have your goals changed at all?

11. Try It Now Remember: • Be specific. Use examples from • papers you’ve written • specific assignments