Dr.

Leslie Bruce
Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics
California State University, Fullerton
P.O. Box 34080
Fullerton, CA 92834-9480
Dear Dr. Bruce,
The intent of this letter is to demonstrate my progression as a writer in ENG 360
by providing examples of my growth as a writer and delineating how my writing meets
all six SLO criteria. My portfolio is arranged in order of importance, with my resume
(new and revised), as my major work, being the first; results and references being second;
and peer reviews being last. Additionally, each document is ordered with respect to
increasing SLO mastery, with my resume demonstrating mastery of most of the six SLO
criteria. The structure of this letter will detail each of my chosen assignments and which
work I feel meets a particular SLO outcome the best.
I choose my resume as my major work because I feel it exemplifies my concision
as a writer, as well as my ability to formally persuade a target audience, because of this I
feel as though it satisfies SLO #1 for formal writing. The details of the assignment
involved writing a job-specific resume, to persuade you to consider me for the position of
a Research Manager in our iFixit groups. To have you consider me for the position of
Research Manager, I included elements and language in my resume, which intended to
persuade you that I have the qualifications for doing work related to this position. For
example, I included key verbs like conducted and analyzed in my employment
history to demonstrate my capability of being a sufficient research manager. In this
aspect, my resume satisfied SLOs #3 and #4. Additionally, my resume document satisfies
SLO #5 because the language and design are unbiased and consistent with resume format,
such as my use of strong, active verbs when describing my employment tasks. In the
initial draft of my resume, I lacked adequate white spacing between major headings and
emphasis on elements in my job titles, which made my resume appear condensed and,
subsequently, slightly difficult to read. In the portfolio-revised version, I added emphasis
to the job titles and increased spacing between the headings, without going over the limit
of one page, which I feel is a significant improvement over my initial draft.
The second document I choose to supplement my major work was my results
section and references from my recommendation report. I included this in my portfolio
because I feel as though it exemplifies my ability to appropriately and ethically cite
sources using my majors citation format. Although there is no particular citation style for
reports in Physics, I choose to use the citation format designed by the Optical Society
(OSA) for research reports, which is similar to the IEEE formatting. For example, in the
Project Summary subsection, every time I quote or paraphrase I end with a number
enclosed in brackets, which is representative of the OSA in-text citation format.
Additionally, these numbers refer to sources in the Reference section at the end of my
recommendation report. My mastery over this citation format demonstrates that I have
satisfied SLO #2.

The last documents included in my portfolio are peer reviews, one in which I
revised a classmates portfolio-revised resume and another in which a classmate critiqued
the portfolio-revised version of my resume. My peer review of their resume demonstrates
my ability to write informal comments designated at helping to improve my classmates
writing as well as improve my own, which satisfies the informal writing requirement of
SLO #1 and the first half of SLO #6. To meet the second half of the SLO #6 requirement,
which required me to have an assignment critiqued and assessed, I included my revised
major assignment, which includes additional descriptors of my research job as
recommended by my reviewer. This peer reviewing process has allowed me to develop as
a writer because it provides me with additional insight on elements to revise in my
writing even when I am unable to see them.
Regards,
Erik Muniz