Cover Letter

To whom it may concern:

I would like to thank you first for your time and effort in reading and evaluating my writing portfolio. In the academic English writing class of the spring semester in 2007, I read four stories collected in the book, International story, and I chose The Americanization of Shadrach Cohen as a focal story in my interpretive essay. My topic is “The Characteristic of Shadrach Cohen”. The works in the portfolio, three drafts of the analytic essays together with one reading log and one timed writing article, is a collection of my writing practice of this class.

The reading log reveals my interest in analyzing the characteristic of Shadrach. As a student from the marketing department, I am interested in the underlying motivation of people’s behavior. So, when many students in the class regard the story as a narration of the tough life of the Jewish people in the Americanization process, I interpret it as a description of a man’s effort to save his family relationship. I came up with the idea the first time that I finished the story and I expressed my favor of Shadrach and my concerned of the father and son relationship in the reading log.
 
However, it took me a long time to develop a satisfied thesis statement. In the first draft of the essay, I tried to transform my understanding of Shadrach’s motive into a thesis statement and I got an “ok” from Mr. Corio, the teacher of the course. However, when I developed the thesis into an article, the idea became less attractive. When I ask the group members for opinions during the peer review process, they told me that they were not clear about my thesis after reading the whole passage. And their comment is that “we are impressive by your detailed analysis of the character of Shadrach, but we are not sure what you are going to tell us through these interpretations.” The comment alerted me to pay attention to the audience’s interest and to concentrate my writing to the thesis. In the later editing process, I kept this awareness in mind and asked myself again and again whether each point was clear and easily understood and whether all the points were closely related to the thesis. By asking myself these questions, I was able to put myself in the readers’ shoes and improve the clarity and cohesive of the article.

Luckily, in the second draft of my essay, I found an effective method to introduce my thesis to my audience in a rather interesting and eye-catching way. The inspiration came when the whole class was discussing which introduction was more interesting in page 79-80 of our textbook. I found that the students in the class were interested in paragraph D most because the thesis in the introduction contradicted with our understanding, making the readers eager to read the rest of the essay and know how the author justified the argument. To be interesting is to be different. Inspired by this idea, I applied the finding in my essay immediately after the class. In the introduction, I first presented readers with a common understanding of Shadrach’s sudden change that held by most of my classmates, and then I presented my understanding of this behavior, which was different from the former. By comparing these two opinions, the readers would have a deeper impression of my thesis. And in the following paragraphs, I listed both evidences that supported my perspective and that refuted the widely accepted alternative. With the two way argumentation, my thesis became more persuasive.

Through the writing practice, I learned not only about how to set up a strong thesis, but also about the differences between the English writing and the Chinese writing. In the Chinese style of writing, a writer develops the article in accordance to his or her own flow of thinking and leaves the conclusion or thesis statement at the end of the article. Sometimes, the thesis is hidden somewhere in the lines of the description, and the readers have to dig it out themselves. In contrast to this hide-and-seek writing style, English writing style is more direct. The writer gives out the thesis statement at the beginning of the article where he or she introduces the background information. So the readers are clear about what to expect in the rest of the article when they start reading. The differences in the writing style bring about the differences in the focus of the writing class. The teacher in the Chinese writing class spends more time elaborating the application of the words, idioms and the rhetoric in the writing, while the instructor of the English writing class highlights the structure of the article. Clear guidelines are provided in organizing the essay, in selecting evidence for critical analysis and in quoting and documenting sources, cultivating a more logical and cautious writing style.

I benefit a lot from a whole semester’s practice and the essays in this portfolio present my improvement of this semester. I would like to thank my group members and Mr. Corio for the precious comments and advices on my writing. Their feedbacks are important for the modification and revision of my essay.

Thank you for taking the time to read my papers. I hope you enjoyed reading these papers.

Sincerely,
Promise Xu