Writing a Cover Letter
A thorough and analytic cover letter explains:
- What the writer was trying to accomplish in each essay
- Analyzes each essay’s strengths and weaknesses
- Acknowledges any help the writer received with the essay, from the instructor,
tutors, friends, fellow students, or family members
A few hints for cover letters:
- Use a formal tone
- Be thorough in describing your writing process
Sample Cover Letter
Dear Portfolio Grading Group,
For my portfolio, I am submitting two papers entitled “Rap
and Rai: Responses
to Racism from Two Countries” and “Depression as a Misunderstood Illness.” In “Rap
and Rai,” I compare two forms of music to show how minorities respond to racism
with music. I think my thesis is particularly strong in this essay since I had help
from John Doe rewriting it after my first draft. I also have strong topic sentences
and a good conclusion. In my conclusion, I try to mention how using art to resist
racism is a common practice because it allows for greater self-expression. This
makes my paper more relevant to society as a whole. I did have a lot of trouble
trying to describe the two music types, though, because I have not thought about
music this analytically before. I still think this may be a weakness of my paper,
but I have expanded my descriptions significantly from my earlier drafts.
The “Depression” paper is my research project for the
semester. For this paper,
I had a lot of trouble writing a thesis because at first I thought it was only a
descriptive paper. However, I went to CAPS and one of the tutors helped me to write
a strong thesis about social stigma and depression. Since my mother suffers from
depression, I really want to talk about how the greater acceptance of drug therapy
has made depression less stigmatized, but it has also created misunderstandings of
the disease as easily treatable. I found a number of sources in the media using
EBSCO and learned about many of the sources at Zimmerman Library. I like the
content of this paper, but I am still having trouble with awkward sentences. It is
hard to describe some of the complicated ideas people hold about depression. John
Doe suggested I try reading the paper out loud and this helped me find many of my
errors, but I think this is still one of my weaknesses in this paper.
Many people helped me revise my papers and gave me support
through English
102. I want to thank my instructor John Doe for offering me advice on structuring a
college paper. I also want to thank the tutors at CAPS and my roommate for helping
me read over my papers. Finally, I want to thank the people at the information desk
at Zimmerman for teaching me to use EBSCO and helping me find resources in the
library.
Sincerely,
Christy
Back to "Preparing a Portfolio"
Center for Academic Program Support
Third Floor, Zimmerman Library, The University of New Mexico
MSC05 3020 1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-1466
Telephone: (505) 277-7205
Site Best Viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x, 5.x, 6.x;
Opera 5.x, 6.x;
Netscape Navigator 6.x, 7.x
