Objectives:Each time you submit an essay in Expos 20, whether it’s a draft or a revision, you'll include a cover letter. This letter is your chance to reflect on your work and (for drafts) to consider its future directions. You can also use the letter as an opportunity to ask for the kind of feedback you think you particularly need, so you should note any specific concerns you may have.
Instructions: Cover letters for drafts should describe your reading, thinking, and writing process and respond to some of the following questions:
- What is your problem – i.e., what analytical question are you trying to answer? (State it in a new way here – don’t just quote your draft.) What makes your argument one that needs to be made?
- How did you come to your question/problem?
- What do you see as your thesis or main idea so far? (Again, don’t just quote your draft.) If you had to write your thesis in 10 words, what would it be?
- How has your argument evolved throughout your response papers and draft writing?
- What kind of essay are you writing? E.g., Unit 1 might be a close reading or a theorization; Unit 2 a historicist or comparative or lens essay; Unit 3 might draw from multiple kinds. What’s the logic of how your evidence fits together to create an argument?
- What’s at stake in your argument? How might it be transformative or revelatory for a standard or surface reading of your text?
- How does your essay relate to life today (if it does - not all essays need to or will)? If your argument has some current resonance, how do you indicate that in the essay?
- What point or idea do you feel you've conveyed most successfully in the draft?
- What are your lingering questions about the text and your argument?
- What are the biggest problems you’re having at this point in the writing process? Which ideas or points are you still struggling to communicate? Are there any skills or lessons that you think we should revisit in classtime?
- Are there ideas you haven’t said as well as you’d like to in the draft, or that you haven’t yet managed to include at all?
- How have you brought your experiences and perspective – your unique voice as a writer – to bear in this essay (either in the development of ideas or the presentation of the argument)?
- What intellectual risks have you taken in this piece?
Cover letters for revisions should describe your re-reading, re-thinking, and re-writing process and respond to some or all of the following questions:
- What is your thesis? How has it changed from draft to revision?
- What are you happiest with in this revision?
- What was most challenging with this revision? How did you approach those challenges?
- What revision techniques did you use?
- What was new about the writing process for you this time around?
- What would you continue to work on in further revision?
In writing your cover letters for both drafts and revisions, avoid cutting-and-pasting from your draft. At the same time, my experience with reading cover letters leads me to say that students often state their ideas (problem, thesis, stakes, etc.) more clearly and more straightforwardly in their cover letters, where they’ve taken a step back from the paper (whether draft or revision) and formulated their sentences having fully worked through a paper. Please consider going back to your paper to revise it after writing your cover letter. If you do so, simply alert me to this fact in the letter itself (so that I know you copied-and-pasted from letter to paper, not vice versa).
Requirements: All cover letters should be:
- Typed single-spaced;
- About one page long;
- Attached to the front of your essay (so that it’s all in a single document).