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09 May 2015

Dr. Leslie Bruce


Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics
California State University, Fullerton
P.O. Box 34080
Fullerton, CA 92834-9480
Dear Dr. Bruce,
This letters purpose is to demonstrate that I have mastered our classs student learning outcomes
(SLOs). I will begin by talking about the prewrite for the proposal, followed by the original proposal
draft, and the peer review to show the writing process I completed for this assignment. Lastly, I will
review the revised proposal and briefly mention my cover letter, to show how my writing as a scientific
writer has improved throughout this process.
The prewrite for the proposal, is an informal writing, out-of-class assignment with the purpose to
organize my thoughts in a way that strengthens my persuasive stance as to why my research ought to
receive funding (SLO 1). I constructed an outline that was organized by sections, like the abstract and
methods, found in the proposal (SLO 4). These sections then contained sub-sections with informal,
fragmented sentences of the main points I wanted to address, like stating that blood collection is used to
measure BDNF levels. Overall, this informal assignment taught me how to thoroughly organize my
thoughts and I was able to use the outline as a checklist to make sure that I covered every point I needed
to write in the proposal (SLO 1, 4).
The original proposal prompt provided a rhetorical situation to persuade the National Science
Foundation (NSF) proposal readers that my research is worthy of receiving grant money. This document
formally addressed a group of NSF readers coming from different backgrounds (SLO 1). Without bias, I
defined the acronym BDNF as a brain-derived neurotropic factor and explained its relationship with
cognitive function to address all readers and not show preference to the ones who understood (SLO 5). To
persuade the readers, SLO 3, I claimed that there is a positive relationship between BDNF levels and
cognitive function. Kramer et al. then states that exercise possibly bridges together this relationship, thus
showing the necessity of this research. Furthermore, I ethically cited sources, such as Kramer et al.,
1999a, for background information, which supported my rationale that BDNF levels in fact have an
impact on cognitive function (SLO 2). However, I missed a few in text citations, showing I have not
mastered SLO 2. I also blended two citation systems together in my assignment. I used APA formatting in
text, like (Podewils et al., 2005), but used a numbering system for my bibliography, which can be seen in
my proposal. I did not properly look at the how to create a true APA bibliography and thus ended up
confusing the two systems. I reorganized my bibliography in the final draft to prove that I understand how
to properly complete a citation list compiled from a variety of sources (SLO 2).
Next in my writing process was completing and receiving a peer review for the proposal. This
peer review was an informal, in-class assignment to assess our peers work and our own. For example, as
I read my peers proposals, I told them to state their proposals purpose more directly to strengthen their
argument (SLO 6). Receiving a peers comments about my proposal on the other hand showed me that

my methods organization was unclear, which I attempted to fix in my final proposal, by explaining the
methods rationale (SLO 6). Overall, I learned peer reviewing is a vital aspect in writing.
The purpose of the final draft is to show my improvement as a scientific writer. After looking
over the peer reviews and comments from the original proposal, I printed out my proposal and edited my
sentences to persuade my readers concisely and effectively. For example, I removed the verb, show,
from the sentence stating BDNF levels show to decrease, and used the vigorous verb, decrease, as the
primary verb of that sentence (SLO 5). This replacement removed two words and strengthened my
sentence. I also fixed the bibliography to prove that I learned how to properly cite in a formal paper.
Lastly, I want to conclude with this cover letter, which exemplifies my writing skills. Even
though there still may be some grammatical errors, I understand how to recognize them and hope that
someday my writing will be error free. Overall, this letters purpose is to summarize my improvement as
a scientific writer and I believe that I thoroughly expressed these skills, as well as showed the path I took
to reach this point.
Sincerely,
Aneta Jelowicki

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