Besides my last three ePortfolio drafts, I’m required to submit a reflective cover letter dissecting my work and what it sets out to accomplish. You can find my cover letter assignment below.
The purpose of my research is to teach my audience – whether actors or doctors or teachers or any other profession – how to write and present a well structured acceptance speech to whatever honor or award they will hopefully and inevitably accept. The intended effect of my paper is to analyze what genre forms actors/actresses use within their acclaimed speeches meant for millions of viewers and how anyone can achieve a similar impact on whoever they address. By considering different audiences outside of the narrow scope of my paper (acceptance speeches from the 2025 Golden Globes), I can more properly break down my primary research and present a final project that can apply to a wide variety of people.
As I’ve worked on my literature review assignment, I’ve revised my sources time and time again. As I’ve immersed myself into the conversation surrounding genre analysis of speeches my viewpoint changed. This was especially prompted by my synthesis chart assignment, which asked me to break down six different academic sources and see how they did and didn’t connect. I made the hard decision of going back to the drawing board after getting 75% of the way through the assignment because I realized my chosen sources didn’t work within the context of my research question. This momentary obstacle allowed me to start over with “better” (if you can define that concept) and more accurate sources to my research, which leads me to where I’m currently at. I feel like I finally feel hopeful about where I’m at in this class and especially in this assignment because I can visualize where to take it next. I found a niche, figured out what my primary data method will be, and now I just have to do it. I especially owe this newfound confidence to my peers who reviewed the rough draft of my assignment, along with a consultation at the writing center that helped me tweak the structure of my final draft to make it “flow” more naturally.
I’m truly very happy with my project so far, in part because I can directly correlate what learning outcomes I’ve picked up through the assignments to the work I’ve submitted. The learning outcome I’ve specifically applied is Revision. This is seen in the aforementioned peer review and visit to the writing center, something I probably wouldn’t have taken part in a year ago in fear of being harshly critiqued. Both interactions provided me heaps of feedback that really helped me with my literature review. I’m excited to keep applying the learning outcomes in the future, both for the rest of my semester in ENC1102 and everything that comes after.