Jordan Schnakenberg

Prof. Melton
ENGL 5
5/6/16
Portfolio Cover Letter
Over the course of this Sacramento State University English Five Accelerated
Academic Literacies class, I have basically been shown that the ways I used to write
in high school are completely wrong (the five paragraph essay). This class also
assisted me in meeting the first year learning goals set by the California State
University Sacramento. Using these six goals, I was able to become a better writer
overall and become more comfortable working with new people that I didnt know,
to help my papers become better with the help of their feedback.
Understanding the ways that readers read and writers write in and beyond
the university is a skill that has taken all semester for me to acquire. This is due to
the fact that over the length of this course I have been able to look at many of my
peers papers to see how they feel on issues and topics and what stances they take
on certain ideas. I have also had the chance to see their inner writing voice and how
it stays the same but can also change slightly based on the style of writing that we
are doing and the prompt choices. I would hope that seeing my writings helped my
fellow piers, either by correcting my mistakes to then see theirs, or see the strong
suits that a paper of mine has so that they can get ideas for their paper. I got good
feedback from people who read my writers narrative saying that they liked the voice
that came from the writing.

I too have a better understanding of the reading, writing, and research

process due to the diversity of our writing prompts and the fact that we have done
three completely different writing styles, not to mention the dialectical journals from
the beginning of the semester. I now realize the importance of writing a paper over
the course of a few days so that I can go back each day to add or edit things that I
come up with throughout the time that I am going about the rest of my day. I also
now know that getting the feedback of an unbiased pier can be one of the most
helpful tools that I can use to make my paper the best that it can be. They will tell
you exactly what is good or bad about your paper in a constructive and nonaggressive manner which is great for my self-esteem and confidence as a writer
because I know that they are only trying shape my paper into an A worthy piece.
This course has also given me a metacognitive understanding of processes of
reading, writing and thinking. This will very much help me in my upper division
writings and writings for my later career. This class gave me a good understanding
of how to formally write and what formats work best for the points you are trying to
convey or who the audience is. I recently got a 94 percent on my government paper
because the professor was impressed by my ability to write in an academic manner
and he said that my skills in grammar where on point.
After this class I now have a much better understanding of textual
conventions in my writings. Acquiring this skill will help me in choosing what genre
to use in my writing depending on who will read it, or the environment in which it
will be seen, either by a manager, coworker, professor, or pier. Knowing what style
to use will give me a great competitive advantage over people competing for a
position where the deciding factor is a paper, or competing for grades even though I

couldnt figure out how to get a B paper in this class but other writing assignments
from other classes get great grades.
Another way that this class has helped me with writing is that I now
understand and engage in reading and writing as communal processes. By this I
mean that you cannot be a one-man army and expect to be able to edit your own
papers in an efficient way. It is very helpful to use classmates and other people to
critique your work. I find that strangers work best because they are not biased to
like or dislike you, and in turn they will not be biased to like or dislike the paper
based on personal feelings. This showed in the workshop where we moved like a
conveyor belt from person to person and each gave their input on my paper.
The final course goal is to help students think critically about academic
discourse communities as contact zones where different cultures both connect and
come into conict. This was a little hard to overcome as I lean more to the
conservative republican side whereas much of the Sacramento State community
leans to be liberal democrats. And while I can look past these differences on most
issues it was a little hard to put my feelings aside and be unbiased as I would
assume it was for anyone reading my rhetorical analysis essay. However, I am much
more unbiased and open minded now being able to work with people so often.
I had a great time in this English 5 class and enjoyed going down the
checklist for the 6 goals and being able to check each one of them off as I wrote this
paper. I feel better equipped to write academically now that I have taken this
course.