Cover Letter

28/11/12

Dear Reader:

As an international student, it is hard for me to studying in America especially the writing part. In my first semester at CSUN, I wrote three essays in ENGL 113 A class with my professor’s help. I want to talk about two of them—Learning from Reading and The Use of Rhetorical Strategies in iPhone 5 Trailer—which really mean a lot to me.

The first one contains my experience of studying since I was a little kid. I am the only child in my family so I was so spoiled by my parents when I was young. Things have changed after I got my first book. I have read hundreds of stories and fables in that book and learned many virtues. It was helpful for me to develop the good characters such as responsibility, courage and faith, etc. I also learned the definition of growing up by reading: knowing my goal of future and being responsible for myself. So I set up my goal to study abroad and began to work on English. It is not easy to achieve my target. I have met billions of difficulties on the path of learning English but I never give up. I told myself over and over that faith could move mountains to encourage myself. Finally and fortunately, I made it. I am now a student at CSUN and I can catch up with the local students in my class even it is hard for me. Nevertheless, I am still on the way of learning English and it would never ends.

The second essay is about an advertisement of the iPhone 5. I have changed my major to marketing when I arrived at America because American is the best at marketing, especially the Apple Company. The heart of marketing is communication and I have learned the rhetorical strategies—logos, pathos and ethos—in the class. Analysis the trailer of iPhone 5 helped me understood the use of those rhetorical strategies, so I put this paper in my portfolio.

Honestly, I made many mistakes in both of the essays. After had workshop with my classmates and edited my essay with professor’s help, I corrected some of mistakes in my essays and made revisions. I changed the order of some paragraphs because they are not in the right place. Writing is probably the hardest part in learning English. Every time I tried to write something I have to translate the topic in Chinese—my first language—then think of the topic and find evidences to support my opinion in Chinese before translate my thoughts in English and typed them in my laptop. I learned the skills and rules of write a good essay from the course of this semester and used them in my essays. I can feel the significant improvements of my writing skill via my essays. Even though my writing is not good enough to get a grade of A, but now I can easily express my feelings or describe my experiences in English. Most of the time I can show my idea clearly in Chinese but I just cannot express myself in English. It was hard for me to give expressions in the foreign language. In my essays, arguments and thesis cannot be conveyed correctly sometimes, but the entire thesis have strong supportive evidences.

I worked very hard on all the essays and I did do my best though to get my idea across and make them satisfied. However, I know my essays are still not perfect. All I need to do to develop my writing skill is to practice more and read more in English. I will absolutely do that continuously in the future. Thank you for taking your time on read this letter and my essays.

Sincerely,

Rachel Yiyi Ge