Writing a Cover Letter

A thorough and analytic cover letter explains:

• What the writer was trying to accomplish in each essay
• Analyzes each essays strengths and weaknesses
• Acknowledges any help the writer received with the essay, from the instructor, tutors, friends, fellow students, or family members

A few hints for cover letters:

• Use a formal tone
• Be thorough in describing your writing process

Sample Cover Letter

Dear Portfolio Grading Group,
                For my portfolio, I am submitting two papers entitled Rap and Rai: Responses to Racism from Two Countries and Depression as a Misunderstood Illness. In Rap and Rai, I compare two forms of music to show how minorities respond to racism with music. I think my thesis is particularly strong in this essay since I had help from John Doe rewriting it after my first draft. I also have strong topic sentences and a good conclusion. In my conclusion, I try to mention how using art to resist racism is a common practice because it allows for greater self-expression. This makes my paper more relevant to society as a whole. I did have a lot of trouble trying to describe the two music types, though, because I have not thought about music this analytically before. I still think this may be a weakness of my paper, but I have expanded my descriptions significantly from my earlier drafts.
                The Depression paper is my research project for the semester. For this paper, I had a lot of trouble writing a thesis because at first I thought it was only a descriptive paper. However, I went to CAPS and one of the tutors helped me to write a strong thesis about social stigma and depression. Since my mother suffers from depression, I really want to talk about how the greater acceptance of drug therapy has made depression less stigmatized, but it has also created misunderstandings of the disease as easily treatable. I found a number of sources in the media using EBSCO and learned about many of the sources at Zimmerman Library. I like the content of this paper, but I am still having trouble with awkward sentences. It is hard to describe some of the complicated ideas people hold about depression. John Doe suggested I try reading the paper out loud and this helped me find many of my errors, but I think this is still one of my weaknesses in this paper.
                Many people helped me revise my papers and gave me support through English 102. I want to thank my instructor John Doe for offering me advice on structuring a college paper. I also want to thank the tutors at CAPS and my roommate for helping me read over my papers. Finally, I want to thank the people at the information desk at Zimmerman for teaching me to use EBSCO and helping me find resources in the library.

Sincerely,
Christy

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