letters.
| Day | Date | Topic |
| 1 | Sept. 9 | CV/résumé contents |
| 2 | Sept. 11 | CV/résumé contents; gapping |
| 3 | Sept. 13 | CVs vs. résumés; parallelism; peer editing |
| 4 & 5 | Sept. 16 & 17 | One-on-one conference with CV/Résumé |
| 6 | Sept. 20 | Sample cover letters |
| 7 | Sept. 23 | Cover letter templates; formality and language |
| 8 | Sept. 25 | Cover letter format and structure in different contexts |
| 9 | Sept. 27 | Discussion of cover letter samples; peer editing; email requests |
| 10 & 11 | Sept. 30 & Oct. 2 | One-on-one conference with cover letter |
Because few of the students were familiar with cover letters, most of the class sessions on Days 6 through 9 were spent examining and discussing sample letters. By presenting students with a wide range of examples, Michele hoped that they could select what they liked from various letters. Six of these sample texts were job application letters, including three written for jobs in industry, one for a graduate research assistantship, one for a postdoctoral position in molecular biology, and one for an assistant professor position in rhetoric and composition. In addition, Michele provided three cover letters of request asking a professor for a letter of recommendation, and four email request letters, with varying requests. She included these non-job application letters for the benefit of John, who would be writing this type of a “request cover letter” as he prepared applications for PhD programs. To some extent, then, the term “cover letter” was used somewhat ambiguously and its various uses and forms were never fully teased out within the classroom. However, because “the cover letter” was situated within a unit related to job applications, most of the students interpreted the term to be equated with job application letters.
On Day 7 of the unit, Michele distributed two quite different job application letters and asked the students to work in pairs to create a “template for a generic cover letter” (Class notes, September 23, 2002) based on their observations of the samples. Two pairs of students wrote their templates on the board; these are reproduced in Figure 3.2. As the figure shows, both pairs identified a similar basic format of (1) self-introduction/purpose for writing, (2) qualifications and experience, and (3) closing remarks. Their structures generally mirror Bhatia’s (1993) moves of establishing credentials, introducing candidature, enclosing documents (found only in John’s and Tae’s template), and ending politely. They exclude his moves of offering incentives, using pressure tactics, and soliciting response—the first two of which Bhatia claims are less common.
Much classroom discussion also centered on specific sentences in the sample letters and the ways in which they may be interpreted by readers. Michele frequently asked questions that explored relationships between formal and rhetorical features of the genre, such as “What are the differences between the letters for different types of jobs” or “How much of a specialist would you need to be to understand this?” Discussions addressed the formal language style and the connections between style and intended audience. The students generally preferred the shorter letters for more general audiences. In fact, there was strong negative reaction to a sample letter written for an academic position in the humanities. In commenting on this letter, these engineering and science students disliked both the high frequency of jargon and the lengthy prose.
On Days 8 and 9, Michele extended the discussion of cover letters to request letters, including requests for letters of recommendation (attached to a résumé) and email requests. The former were included to address the needs of one student, John, who was hoping to request letters of recommendation from some of his professors. Michele also recognized that requests can be rhetorically challenging, so she incorporated a 20-minute classroom activity in which students examined four email requests that she had received. She asked students to read the emails and try to determine the relationship between the sender and receiver, in terms of familiarity and status, exploring the ways in which social relationships are indexed through texts. Students noted variations in word choice and formality, and asked about how common different phrases were. The inclusion of letters of request may have helped students to draw connections between this genre and the job application letter, but, as I shall show later in this chapter, only John made these connections explicit in discussing the assignment with me.
The WCGS classroom discussions were interesting to observe for several reasons. They showed that the writers did have preferences for some forms over others, despite being unfamiliar with the genre. In some cases, such as the reaction to the lengthy humanities job application letter, these preferences may have been influenced by the discourses of their hard science disciplinary backgrounds. For example, the long sentences and paragraphs of the humanities letter are likely to contrast rather sharply with the hard science preference for more concise text. The classroom discussions also gave students a chance to see how their peers and instructor reacted to the different texts, or even to very specific phrases within those texts. While the students often came to these discussions with preferences, their preferences may also have been shaped in part by the discussions themselves, as they listened to the reactions of others. As I later traced the writers’ cover letter practices, the classroom discussion re-emerged in interesting ways through both their texts and their comments, as I shall illustrate in the next section.
Cover Letter Knowledge Building: Four Cases
Each of the four writers experienced the résumé/cover letter assignment uniquely, according to their own prior experience and immediate needs. In order to best capture some of these distinctions, I describe their experiences individually, beginning with Chatri and then Yoshi, the two writers who made no use of the cover letter genre outside of the classroom. Next, I describe John’s experience, which included a very immediate need to write a “request cover letter” during the semester he was enrolled in WCGS. Finally, I provide a more detailed description of Paul’s experiences, over a six-month period in which the cover letter became an increasingly important and more high-stakes genre for him.
Chatri: Writing Text, Forming Preferences
Of the four writers, Chatri seemed to be the least immediately invested in the cover letter. Because he already held a stable RA position and was obliged to return to a Thai university upon completion of his PhD, he did not foresee any immediate situations in which he would write such a letter. Again, Chatri had not heard of a cover letter before WCGS, but after the class sessions in this unit had finished, he was able to give a very general description of the use and rhetorical goal of the genre, describing it as a letter that covers a résumé and introduces a candidate. He had also developed some understanding of the letter as a linked genre. He distinguished the résumé and cover letter in terms of the work they required of the reader, explaining that the reader must infer meaning from a résumé, but the writer does this task for the reader in a cover letter. The letter that Chatri composed for WCGS was written in response to a year-old job posting on Honda’s website. In his conference with Michele, he explained that he could not actually apply for the position, and that it was “just for the class” (Conference #3, October 2, 2002).
In the relatively short space of time in which the class focused on cover letters, Chatri developed an awareness of what kind of subject matter should be included and in what order. He described it as something like a template:
Okay, the format is the first paragraph should be introduce myself, I’m a student, or what I want, why I write the letter. Just only I think three sentence is okay. And then the next paragraph is try to tell about my experience or tell that why my qualification is okay for this position. Actually, this can try from the CV, but I think just write only short paragraph to tell about me. And then the ending paragraph is just, I think it’s typical that, “Okay, I feel that your company is really good. I hope that you will accept me.” Or something like that. (October 2, 2002)
After writing his first draft, but before receiving
