Cover Letter

Dear mentor,

In our first meeting in ENGLCOM - RWC, you’ve told us to write a reflective essay about our strengths and weaknesses in reading, writing and grammar. Also, we were asked to write the goals that we wanted to achieve in the course. The goals that I set for myself for ENGLCOM, both RWC and LC, are - to have better thought organization in writing essays, to refine my grammar skills and to learn more. During our classes in ENGLCOM, I really believe that I was able to achieve these goals and more. I’m proud to say that the course has exceeded my expectations. Some pieces of evidence that I’ve achieved the desired learning results are my essays and paragraphs. Even with just the table contents, you can see that I’ve improved as we progressed in writing. In addition to this, since you’ve read my essays, I can actually say that the flow of my thoughts have become smoother and more concise. All these show my progress as a critical and creative thinker/writer. Evidence showing that I’ve become an effective communicator is that I can peer-edit my friends’ works better now. I’ve learned a lot about grammar tenses and hedging devices in the Language Component of ENGLCOM. What’s more, I’ve learned how to properly cite sources (Thank you, Purdue Owl and Ms. Cequeña!). Citing resources is my BIGGEST weakness in writing essays and now I’ve overcome that, though I still need to improve on this area more. Being a reflective lifelong learner, I keep my previous essays at home; whenever I need to write a new essay, I reread my previous essays and remember how I wrote them and analyze the mistakes I made so I can do a better job on my next one.

The hardest topic for me is making an outline. This topic is about me being a critical and creative writer. I’m a very choosy writer; I only write essays well when I like the topic being discussed. (e.g. my extended definition) I have tons of ideas when I write but I find it hard to narrow them down and make an outline. Because of this, I sometimes lack conciseness in my essays/paragraphs. I sometimes have to write my essays first before my outline because I need to write all my ideas before I can narrow it down. I edit, delete and make paragraphs and it takes me days just to make it right.  

I plan to practice really hard because I really love to write. I get frustrated when I’m unable to make a good essay even when I like the topic that I’m writing about. I will read more materials and practice outlining and summarizing every week. I’ve also learned techniques in our ELL (thank you, Sir Jessie) and I plan to incorporate everything I learned and hone them through PRACTICE.

I learned a lot of things in this class and I’m proud of every single thing I learned but the accomplishment that I’m most proud of in this class would be my extended definition essay. I had this motto before about time and I incorporated it into my essay.  I loved the subject that I was writing on and I was happy with the essay that I wrote. This essay, for me, portrayed what I’m capable of. This evidence proved that I’ve improved a lot in my writing.

In this course, I’ve learned 3 things about myself as a writer. The first thing I learned are the capabilities within myself that I never knew I had. I never thought that I could write well if I really put my heart in it. The second thing I learned is that I should be open-minded and objective as an academic writer. Also, according to Ms. Manalansan, our LC professor, I need to make use of hedging devices in academic writing. The third thing I learned in this course is that I should love writing to be able to write good essays. The readers wouldn’t love what you’ve written if you, yourself wouldn’t love what you wrote.

The revisions that I’ve done in my essays are all based on your suggestions. Hopefully, I’ve done them correctly. When I was revising my works, all I thought was how to make them better. I followed your comments and reread my works; I thought I can edit some of the sentences and replace them with better diction and sentence structure.

To end my letter, I wish to say how grateful I am for everything I learned in your class and though I wasn’t the best student, I’m thankful that you’ve been patient with me. Not only did I learn, I also grew as a writer because of the comments and suggestions that you’ve written in my papers. THANK YOU! J

Sincerely,

Pauline Ong