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,
I have written this letter to impress upon you that the learning outcomes that you have
gone over in class has not fallen on deaf ears and that I have obtained sufficient proficiency over
these outcomes throughout my time in your class. Throughout our semester, we had six learning
outcomes, which were rhetorical focus, ethical research, persuasive arguments, organization and
focus, academic language and design, and collaboration. I believe that in the editorial
assignment, I managed to fulfill, or at least made an attempt to fulfill, the use of all six outcomes.
The first outcome that I addressed was rhetorical focus. This assignment required that we
address an audience of college students and the LA Times readers, because of this, the writing
style required that our focus be more developed beyond basic concepts and dive into more
complex matters like data and applications. It demanded that the construct and wording of the
paper would also have to advance beyond everyday language and into academic language. This
assignment forced me to rewire my thinking from casual to professional. I believe that I achieved
this by not speaking as if I would to a friend but as I would to an intellectual peer. Another piece
that helped accomplish rhetorical focus is actually a group chat that I had with some of my peers.
Our conversation focused on our assignments and how we could improve our work, which also
happens to be another SLO that I will cover later.
The second outcome that I worked toward was ethical research. A large component of
ethical research is citing sources and I cited or referenced every author that I drew insight from.
The class required that we use the preferred citation style of our respective majors. So, as a
Kinesiology major, I used APA formatting for all parenthetical citations and the Works Cited
page.
Our third outcome was the use of persuasive arguments. I believe that I failed to fully
meet this outcome with our editorial assignment because I failed to establish a clear thesis from
the beginning of my editorial. Because of this, the rest of my paper lacked clear direction and a
strong argument. I strongly believe that I didnt establish a clear thesis because I wanted to avoid
taking a strong stance on the subject but I understand that this is what I must do in my writing. I
hope that the edits I make will correct this and that my work will improve significantly.
The fourth outcome that we learned was an organization and focus of thoughts. This was
displayed in my assignment through breaking sections down and focusing on topics within those
sections, rather than letting my thoughts run loose without guidance on what I should be talking

about. While sections werent separated by pure empirical data versus pure language and
argument, I did attempt to separate the topics discussed like separating how much of a factor
media plays and how much the U.S. has done in the past.
The fifth outcome was academic language and design. This outcome dealt with how the
words we use and the way we structure them affects the strength of our voice. In my writing, I
made a strong effort to not assume that my audience would know anything about the disasters or
crises that I referenced and to avoid any biases that I may have had about cultures or genders. I
believe that I accomplished this but failed to fully inform on details that may have improved the
strength of my paper.
The sixth and final outcome was collaboration with others. Even though it isnt explicitly
stated in my editorial, the product that I submitted was much worse off before having been edited
by my peers. They also pointed out that my paper seemed to lack a strong thesis and I thought
that I had been able to address it in initial edits after their critiques; however, it is clear to see that
I still failed to do so. The group chat mentioned earlier is also an example of collaboration
because we would send our work to each other and make revisions before sending them back. In
this way, we were able to collaborate and build one anothers work up together.
The editorial assignment that I submitted is far from perfect and even the edited version
with your comments will not make the paper a perfect assignment. It is, however, a huge leap in
improvement in my academic writing before I took this class.
Thank you,
Kevin Kim