To: Dr.

Leslie Bruce

December 11, 2015

English Department.
800 N. State College Boulevard
Fullerton, CA 92831
Dear Dr. Bruce,
The purpose of this letter is to directly point out the types of assignments that I
have done throughout the course of this semester to show how I have learned from them
and used them to my advantage as a student. As part of this assignment I will also include
how I have learned and understand what the meaning of the six SLOs really is. This will
include two Writers Notebooks, Group projects/assignments, Editorial, and other in class
assignments. I will explain what is like working on my own as an individual in
comparison to working with a group. I will explain in detail how each of these areas has
helped me fully understand specific lessons and how they benefited me as well. I worked
hard on every assignment and each one of them brought me closer towards my goal of
wanting to achieve the grade that I feel I deserve in the course.
(1) The purpose of the Writers Notebooks are to understand the lesson of the day
and see if we ourselves can elaborate on the lesson. The Writers Notebook I will be
talking about is The Rhetorical Triangle because it is something that helped me analyze
each side of the triangle for example the ethos, pathos, and logos and how it works when
using it in writing a research paper or other assignments. I was confused and did not
understand what each side meant when Dr. Bruce first presented the Triangle to the class
but through asking questions, it helped me clear up the confusion. There were many
assignments that we did in class that we were able to apply the rhetorical triangle on and
the more I used it, the more I understood it. The student-learning outcome that this
represents in my opinion is (Rhetorical Focus) because since it is something that can be
used in writing a variety of papers, it can use informal and formal with a different
purpose to different audiences including the three different parts of the rhetorical triangle.
(2) The purpose of the Editorial Paper was to write a paper and be able to
elaborate on a current topic that is related to water in todays society and have that paper
be published as an article. It had to be (Persuasive) in a way to show the readers some
sort of interest and a reason for them to care and continue to read the article and why it
would matter. This could be another representation of a SLO. Those papers have to be
incredibly detailed so that the reader can understand what is going on and most

importantly why the reader should even care about that topic. There were specific parts
that the professor wanted her students to include but were not limited on their papers so
that it would not be just like every other newspaper article that are seen on a daily basis.
For example bulleted points, highlighted areas, bolded titles, side captions, etc. so that all
that information will catch the readers attention and they will actually want to read the
article versus having a plain paragraph with no indentations or even spaces to give the
reader space and not seem to jumbled up. This was an interesting paper to write and mine
was based on the construction of a new bordered fence that separates the United States
from Mexico in San Diego in the Pacific Ocean and if it will be worth building it and
investing the American Citizens tax money in rebuilding the fence or not. I can consider
this paper to be part of the SLO (Organization) because it was a lot of specific work that
has to be done and in a certain way so we really had to organize it from beginning to end.
I learned in this paper how to use many different citations from peer reviewed sources
and online as well. It was an interesting assignment and the results of that paper will only
help me understand in more detail, all of the professors marks based on her overall
judgment. I will be able to edit the paper and use it in this portfolio to be able to share the
mistakes I made and alter them as I go on.
I made many mistakes on this paper and majority of it was plagiarized in the way
that my citations were off and were not phrased correctly so once having gone over the
corrected paper, I understood where I went wrong, but it really scared me because I did
receive a 0 on the paper and I really had to fix that. The student-learning outcome that
this part of the assignment falls under is the(Ethical Citation) because my citation were
misplaced and caused me to plagiarize.
(3) Lastly will be my group project that I had to do with my group about recycled
water being once again drinkable. To start off with, working with groups was never my in
my favor because there was always conflicts with group members and it would all just
turn into a huge mess at the end. A SLO that this can cover is (Language & Design)
because we had to come up with what kind of design our group would settle on for the
presentation format if magazine or article and then we also had to add quotations and
captions to make it interesting and not boring and add columns and many different things
to catch the attention of the reader. For example the project that the professor had us work
on that consisted of 3-4 group members in choosing a topic that was also related to water
but instead of having made this an individual assignment, the professor turned it into a
group assignment. This group project was quite interesting because in the beginning there
were problems like I said; with the entire group members and some of us had rather done
it on our own. As the dates came closer to present, our group tied together and became a
little more organized than at the beginning and we managed getting the assignment done
as a group with each of our ideas becoming one whole and that was really interesting.
This assignment meets the (Collaboration) student-learning outcome since we worked
together in a group rather than having worked alone.

Sincerely,

Maricarmen Zambrano