Cover Letter

Dear Professor Werner,

            I included the three projects we completed this semester in my portfolio. The first is a narrative essay describing my personal writing process entitled, “Getting from Blue to Black.” The second piece is a rhetorical song analysis entitled, “Breaking Free of the Cage.” My final piece is an analytical research paper exploring the conventions of contemporary theatre entitled, “The Performer with the Audience: An Exploration of Contemporary Theatre.” Each one of these pieces is quite different, but each has taught me very important writing techniques and conventions. While writing, I was not surprised that I found rhetorical analysis somewhat difficult; establishing a clear argument, especially when using source quotes as support, has always been a challenge for me. But these pieces allowed me to grow and cultivate skills to make my rhetoric stronger.

            My first essay was very exciting to complete. It was in this initial piece where I was able to discover my own personal voice as a writer. I think if I were to revise this piece again, I would include more concrete examples of my outlining process; my description of this process can be quite confusing in places because I outline in a very unique way. Therefore, more concrete examples may have helped clarify my process. Exploring my own writing process felt very autobiographical in a strange sense, but was also a valuable opportunity to take an in-depth look at my technique, so that I may be aware of what needs improvement as I continued through the semester.

            While I feel that my second piece was the weakest of the three, it was one of the most eye-opening. I believe that this piece was the weakest because I was unable to effectively analyze the song I chose, even after one revision. I believe that it was eye-opening because I found that analysis was a lot more challenging to master than I believed it to be. I found myself describing the song lyrics more often than I was analyzing them. If I would revise this paper again, I would be sure to take a closer look at my analysis, and frame a very distinct argument so that it would be necessary for my rhetoric to be very detailed and specific.

            I believe that my third essay was my strongest piece. It also proved to the most difficult because research was scarce to create an effective argument. However, I was able to hone in my thesis to one piece of theatre that I believed encapsulated contemporary theatre, and proved how it did so. I was most passionate about the topic of this final piece, and therefore, had great motivation to establish a clear and effective stance in the issue. I am excited to continue work on this piece because I believe there is much more to be explored in the world of contemporary theatre, and the best way to do so is to learn directly from the source – theatre artists of today. I look forward to seeing where my further research and writing takes me with this project.

Overall, I believe that my biggest hurdle was establishing a clear and effective position in my writing. Establishing a strong argument is something I still need to work on, but I believe I was able to improve greatly in rhetorical analysis as the semester progressed. And I believe each of my pieces display that progress.

Sincerely,

Jackie Marschke