Reading a Cover Letter and Résumé

The cover letter and résumé work hand in hand. The cover letter connects to a specific person at a specific company about a specific job. The résumé then provides detailed information showing how your experience, education, and skill line up with the job. You can review the following samples to get a sense of how these two documents work.

Reading a Cover Letter

Read the following cover letter, written by a student to apply for the position of pool manager where he had been working as a lifeguard. Note how the cover letter highlights details in the résumé that follows, which gives specifics. Click on the side notes to view the different parts of each document.

Sample Cover Letter

Heading Robert Schneider

714 N. Crenshaw St.

Griffith, IN 46319

rschneider315@ghs12.edu

Date 30 February 2018

Inside Address Mr. Carlson, Liaison

Methodist Campground Board

1250 Wesley Road

Des Plaines, IL 60018

Salutation Dear Mr. Carlson:

Opening I'm writing to express my strong interest in the position of Pool Manager for the Campground Pool for this summer's season. To prepare for this role, I have taken the latest Lifeguard Instructor course through the American Red Cross, as you will see on the enclosed résumé. You will also see that I graduate in May from high school and so can work the usual season from Memorial Day to Labor Day this year. Please review the résumé for my other qualifications.

Middle Of course, my greatest store of experience comes from my previous two summers as a lifeguard at the Campground Pool. I understand pool policies and procedures for guarding, locker-rooms, front-desk, chemistry, cleaning, and maintenance. I've worked closely with previous staff and board members, including yourself. You know my work ethic, punctuality, and ability to work well with others to solve problems. I very much appreciate the opportunities and trust you have given me in the past and hope to take on more responsibility at the pool this summer.

The Campground Pool has been a big part of my childhood and an even bigger part of my early work history. I would love the opportunity to lead the staff in making this a great place for families into the future.

Closing If you have any questions or would like to set up an interview, please contact me at rschneider315@ghs12.edu or call me at (219) 555-9242. I look forward to hearing from you!

Complimentary Closing Sincerely,

Signature Block Robert Schneider

Lifeguard Instructor

Enclosure Note Enclosure: Résumé

Warm-Up for Résumé Writing

In tribal societies, pretty much everybody has to do everything: hunting, gathering, making tools, building shelters, fetching water, hauling goods, fighting predators, bartering, teaching, learning, and so on. In modern societies, people specialize. Most people don't grow their own wheat or make their own circular saws or build their own houses. Instead, they pay experts who can do these tasks much more effectively and efficiently while meanwhile making money doing something they are experts in.

Your schooling is starting you on the road to becoming an expert in something. Your first few jobs will continue that journey. Just as you've learned a great deal in school, you will learn even more as you work and develop expertise. But how do you build a bridge from the classroom to the workplace? You start by writing an effective résumé.

What Is a Résumé?

© Thoughtful Learning 2018

A résumé is a document that helps potential employers understand who you are: your objectives, experience, skills, education, and awards. The word résumé comes from the French "resume," meaning to "take back, assume again, or regain." In other words, when you are writing a résumé, you are regaining all of the experiences you've had that can prepare you to succeed in a new opportunity. Some people also use the term c.v. or curriculum vitae, which means "course of one's life."

Thinking About the Course of Your Life

You began life as a single cell. You now have a trillion of them. That's a lot of change to go through. You can reflect over the long course of your life by completing a time line. For each period, list key experiences, educational influences, and who you became. Here's the course of one student's life.

Writing for Literature Assessment

When you respond to a writing prompt, you should start by carefully reading and analyzing the prompt using the PAST questions. Then you should jot down a quick outline of your response. Do these activities in the first five minutes or so of the time you have. (If the prompt includes a reading, take more time with this step.) You'll spend the bulk of your time creating a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Afterward, you'll want to review your answers to the PAST questions and read your response, making sure it is on target. In the last five minutes or so, revise and edit your work. This abbreviated version of the writing process needs to fit into the total time you are given (often between 30 and 90 minutes).

Viewing a Sample Prompt and Response

Read the following prompt, and view one student's PAST analysis, outline, and beginning, middle, and ending. Then you'll get a chance to read and respond to a prompt of your own.

Sample Writing Prompt

Responding to Literary Writing Prompts

Often tests contain writing prompts that ask you to respond to literature. A writing prompt is a specific set of instructions that you must follow to write a well-targeted essay. If you write an excellent response that does not answer the prompt, you will score poorly.

Analyzing Writing Prompts

Some prompts may provide you a short reading and ask for a written response. Others may present a quotation or thesis and ask you to argue for or against it using evidence from literature that you have read.

To succeed on writing assessments, you must start by analyzing the writing prompt. You can use the PAST questions:

• Purpose? Why am I writing? (To analyze a character? To demonstrate a theme? To evaluate a work?)
• Audience? Who is my reader? (Tester? Classmates? Other readers?)
• Subject? What topic should I write about? (A central conflict? A key setting? Literary/poetic devices?)
• Type? What type of writing should I create? (Analysis essay? Character sketch? Review?)

Sample Writing Prompt

Answers to PAST Questions

• Purpose?

  To argue for or against the idea that "a person's greatest strength can also be his or her greatest weakness"

• Audience?

  Other readers

• Subject?

  Lives of characters in literature

• Type?

  Position/argument essay

Answering Multiple-Choice Questions

High-stakes assessments often include multiple-choice questions, which can be graded by machine. Questions may ask about character and conflict, symbol and theme, literary and poetic devices, or anything in between. Follow these guidelines to score your best on multiple-choice questions:

• Read questions first. Then you know what to watch for.
• Note question order. Often the first question asks about the first part of the reading. Usually questions follow the order of the passage.
• Treat each passage separately. You usually answer a bank of multiple-choice questions for each passage before being prompted to write about a set of passages together.
• Analyze characters and conflict. For literature, questions often focus on what characters desire and fear, which creates conflict that drives plot.
• Analyze narration, descriptions, action, and dialogue. Questions may also ask about how the writer creates a piece of literature, focusing on one or more of these components.
• Be patient with poems. They may take as long or longer to analyze than pieces of literature.
• Analyze words, sounds, images, thoughts, and emotions. For poetry, questions may ask you to focus on devices the poet has used to achieve a given effect.
• Answer easy questions first. Eliminate obviously wrong answers.

Answering Multiple-Choice Questions About a Text

Often, high-stakes assessments will present you with a text, asking you to read it and analyze it by responding to multiple-choice questions.

Understanding Vocabulary

When you read an unfamiliar word, you need to figure out its meaning based on how it is used. You can use the following context clues to guess a meaning.

Inferring and Analyzing Theme

Have you heard the expression, "You can't see the forest for the trees"? Sometimes it's easy to see the details but hard to make out the big picture. So far, you've taken a close look at details such as character and conflict as well as literary and poetic devices. Now you need to take a step back to see the larger pattern, or theme, contained within those details. Theme refers to the meaning of a work—what it says about life. Finding theme can be as challenging as seeing the forest, but you have multiple paths you can follow.

Inferring Themes

Just as every tree and creature is part of a given forest, so every character, description, action, conversation, and literary or poetic device in a work contributes to the theme of the work. The writer has chosen all parts purposely to create a larger meaning. So, you can follow any of these pathways to discover themes.

For example, note how analyzing the parts of "Their Eyes Were Watching God" can lead to discovering themes (in italics):

This rural Florida farm in the early 1900s is a halfway point between the world ruled by white men (where Joe Stark made his money) and the community that African Americans were setting up (where Joe Stark intends to become a "big voice"). Janie Mae can stay put on the farm, move to the white man's world to seek her fortune, or move to the black man's world to do so. The decision that faces her is not unlike that facing most modern people, whether to stay home in a familiar middle place or venture into a very different world.

• Character: How does this person represent people in general? How does this character change during the story and why?

  Janie Mae is young and hardworking, with little experience beyond her farm outside of the family members who have variously passed her around as she came of age, and the man to whom she is married. Like all young people, she has dreams of exploring a larger world, dreams that will never be realized if she stays where she is. Perhaps she represents the theme that to find your true self, you must leave home and risk everything.

• Conflict: What sort of conflict is this (person vs. self, vs. other, vs. society, vs. nature, vs. supernatural, vs. machine)? What does this conflict tell us about life?

  Janie Mae is torn between the security of her farm life and the possibilities presented by Joe Stark—money, fine clothes, leisure, and most importantly, having a "big voice." She can't make up her own mind (person vs. self) and also would face serious social consequences if she runs off with this stranger (person vs. society). Janie Mae would like to be someone rather than no one, and Joe promises to let her reap the benefits of his success. But Joe can't make her into someone. Like all of us, Janie Mae has to make herself whatever she will become.

• Setting: How does the place and time shape the characters? How does it shape the story? What does it say about our place and time?

The setting of Janie Mae's farm is absolutely critical. It is halfway between the white'man's world where Joe has made his fortune and the new African-American community where he and she hope to become important. The farm is the world that Janie Mae knows, closely in contact with nature and hard labor and removed from the "far horizon" she dreams of. In this way, the setting represents the central conflict that she faces—whether to remain in the familiar confines of farm and family or to venture into the unknown with this slick-talking stranger.

• Plot: What does this sequence of events teach the main character?

  Janie Mae's conversations with Joe Starks paint a picture of a larger world that she wishes to be part of. She imagines herself sitting on a porch, enjoying potatoes that someone else had planted for her. She imagines a life of prestige and ease that starkly contrasts the farm life she has. These conversations awaken in Janie Mae desires she didn't know she had. Perhaps the only way to eventually find herself is first to lose herself.

• Literary Devices: What symbols and metaphors does the writer use and why?

  Joe Starks' clothing symbolizes his status, relative wealth, and ambition. The water pump that Janie Mae vigorously works to catch Joe's attention, symbolizes their conversation together. Janie and Joe mix the cool water with syrup from the barn and sit and sip and talk about the future. The sweetened water shows how simple social interchanges can lead to relationships, which can in turn lead to a whole world of other possibilities.

Analyzing Literary and Poetic Devices

Authors and poets use a number of devices to create their works. You can analyze these devices to more fully understand a story or poem.

Analyzing Devices in Literature

Writers use narration, description, action, dialogue, and a host of other devices as they create their stories.

Analyzing Characters

Almost all literature contains characters, the answer to who? in the 5 W's and H. Characters in literature are just like people in real life. You can describe them physically—their facial expressions, body posture, hair color, eye color, build, race, age, and sex. You can describe them psychologically—personality, intellect, education, role in society, desires, and fears. In fact, what characters desire and what they fear tend to be the sources of conflict for them, striving to get what they want and overcome what they dread.

Analyzing Characters in Literature

Sometimes authors describe characters outright, but often they show who characters are through their words and deeds. Your job as the reader is to analyze characters by finding outright evidence in the text and inferring other traits through dialogue and action.

Closely Reading Literature and Poetry

Start your close read by carefully working through the text. Then, you can analyze the work by thinking about the parts of it. You've seen how the 5 W's and H relate to the key parts of any story. Now you'll use these parts to analyze a piece of literature.

Reading Literature

You can analyze literature by focusing on these common elements of stories:

• Characters Who are the main people involved? Are they protagonists (struggling for something) or antagonists (struggling against something) or supporting characters?
• Setting Where and when does the literature take place? How do the place and time affect what is happening in the story?
• Conflict What is the problem that the character faces? How does the conflict arise from the person's desires and fears?
• Plot What series of events brings the character into confrontation with the conflict? Does the character succeed? How do the events change the person?
• Theme What does the literature have to say about life in general? What is the deeper meaning of the work?

You'll find these elements not just in works of fiction but also in biography and historical nonfiction. For example, the following reflection by Mark Twain contains all of these elements to one degree or another. Think about them as you read the literature and prepare to answer questions about each part afterward.