Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Leslie Bruce
Humanities Room 526
800 N. State College Boulevard
Fullerton, CA 92831
The reason I chose to enroll in scientific writing over English 301 was because I felt that my
experience in scientific writing were limited to lab reports. My purpose for writing this letter is to
showcase a portion of my work and the ways in which it satisfies the various student learning
outcomes outlined for this course. The assignments that will be discussed are: Definition of catalyst,
my freewriting conference homework, annotated article entry in my scholars notebook, and this
cover letter.
Scientific writing is done with a variety of audiences in mind. This cover letter partially satisfies the
rhetorical focus SLO because I am writing formally to you in an attempt to persuade you of the ways
in which my work this semester fulfills all SLO requirements. A good example of my non-formal
writing is the freewriting exercise I was assigned for my first conference. This exercise was done
with me as the audience so I could set a loose outline for the review paper. This set of work shows I
am able to write formally, informally, for a variety of audiences, and for various purposes.
Plagiarism is not acceptable in any writing and that is why we learned how to conduct ethical
research. My original definition assignment contained some citation errors but upon revision Ive
identified and corrected them using the proper American Psychological Association format for my
reference. Proper in text citation is also used. The American Chemical Society format for citations is
used in my annotated article and shows that I am able to cite correctly in styles other than
APA.
Persuasion is an important tool in scientific writing. This cover letter demonstrates my ability to write
a persuasive argument. Each body paragraph evaluates how a particular assignment fulfills an SLO.
Specific examples referenced and found within each text; such as me referencing my citation
improvements.
This semester I also worked to organize my thoughts to effectively communicate myself in writing. I
applied many tools we learned in my definition assignment. I employed one sentence definitions and
partitioning so the reader could learn what a catalyst is and how it works.
This semester, I show the most improvement in academic language and design. The original
definition assignment lacked whitespace and some figures had no captions and some werent
referenced in-text. The revised assignment implements these elements making the definition easier
to understand. I also show my sensitivity to gender and culture because I wrote the readers of The
Encyclopedia of Science and Technology who are an audience with various genders and cultures.
collaborate with others. My partner and I worked together to analyze and synthesize the articles
purpose in a sentence and then we answered the questions outlined in the prompt.
This semester was challenging but a lot was accomplished. I learned the importance of revision,
setting timetables, and always writing with my audience in mind. I hope that this portfolio is a
reflection of the skills Ive learned and practiced throughout this course. I know what I learned is
Sincerely,