Cover Letter
To whom it may concern,
First, I would like to thank you for taking time to read my writing portfolio. I am a sophomore in Fudan University, Shanghai, China. My name is Sherry. This writing portfolio is composed of some selected articles I wrote this semester, including three drafts of an interpretive essay, a final timed-wring and a reading log. All of them best represent my improvement in English writing in the past four months.
I love learning languages and English is one of my favorite, since it is the first foreign language I have learned. When I was in elementary school, I wrote my first English article. From then on, I have always been trying to better my English writing. Thanks to much practice, to write in English was no longer too difficult for me after I had enrolled in university, but there was still much to improve. One of the most severe problems within my writing was that I was often inclined to write in a discursive manner, which I had not been conscious of until I revised my first draft. I made great efforts to overcome this proclivity via making a clear outline before the second draft. Redundancy and too many direct quotes were also noticeable in my essay. To eliminate them I learnt to arrange my viewpoints logically to make paraphrases. Other defects also emerged in my repetitive writing and revising. I spent a lot of time and endeavor coping with them and I really harvested a lot.
I think that my English writing did improve greatly in this semester and it was very surprising that I made progress quite unconsciously. In class I learned many details in English writing, such as the correct usage of punctuation and numbers, which helped me greatly in writing a formal and fluent essay. Free writing was also very conducive to my writing. In free writing we were supposed to write down anything that came into our mind around a given topic for ten minutes. Such drills broadened my mind imperceptibly and greatly enhanced my ability in exploring the issues. Many other changes continually took place in my writing. All of them accumulated little by little, finally making a great leap. You may see these changes in my papers.
Half of my writing portfolio consists of the three drafts of my essay on a short story, The Grass-Eaters. The story narrates the life of the poorest in India in mid-twentieth century, adopting large quantities of black humor. When reading the story, I felt extremely amused at first, but strongly shocked soon after. Deeply impressed, I decided to write on the function of black humor in this story. To tell the truth, I have never spent so much time in writing a single English essay. Totally I spent no less than 50 hours on writing and revising it. Though the process was a bit of tiring, I found the efforts and the time absolutely worthwhile.
The remaining part of this portfolio is made of a final timed-writing and a reading log. The timed-writing is written on a given topic within 45 minutes, which largely embodies my extempore writing. The reading log records my instant feeling and reflection after I have read through another short story, Dead Men's Path. Reading logs are something I had never experienced before I took the class, however, when I started to write them after reading, I found such logs quite interesting. They are also very helpful when I want to write about the stories, since they contain my most intense and original reaction after reading.
All through writing these papers and arranging the portfolio, I always enjoy this process. Every time when I think that I am trying to convey what I feel and what I want to tell in another language, I always find it exhilarant and fantastic. Writing in English also provides me with the opportunity to know more about this language, which makes it a very interesting experience.
Finally, I want to thank all those have helped me through my writing. I am especially thankful to my kind partners. Without their keen discernment, my essay wouldn't be as cogent as it is now. The effect of their assistance is imponderable. And I would like to express my greatest gratitude to my instructor, Ron Corio. He offered us many precious resources in improving our English writing and gave us many constructive suggestions. In his class, we also enjoyed many opportunities of peer discussion, which proved to be extremely useful in making our writing better. His way of teaching is completely different from those of Chinese teachers, but it does work well and I acquired incredibly much from it.
Thank you again for taking the time to read my papers. I hope that you will enjoy them. Though the class is coming to an end, my journey of learning English writing will go on. And this portfolio will not be a terminus, but the starting point of a new jaunt.
Yours sincerely,
Sherry