The following section presents excerpts from a student's cover letter for a Web Application Development position at Nintendo of America. The student hopes to impress recruiters with his experience, which, he believes, fulfils the job requirements. However, the recruiters did not find the cover letter convincing enough. In the challenges that follow, try to consider the options presented so that the student can make the most of effective case for the audience.

Directions: Identify and improve text that can help the student use coherence, concision, and correctness more effectively.

Challenge 1: Being Coherent

Your Goal

Connecting old information with new information in a seamless manner

Coherence Example

Less Coherent

“Coherence connects old information with new information. Concision cuts out unnecessary information.”

More Coherent

“Coherence connects old information with new information. Unlike Coherence,concision cuts out unnecessary information.”

Comments on Response Options

Problem Text

I plan to receive my B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon. The university that is leading in Computer science contributed to the quality of my education and my value of teamwork.

Option A

“Carnegie Mellon, the university that is leading in Computer Science, which contributed”

This option is better than the original one because it immediately assigns to the already-known university name an additional quality (“leading”) which is important for the readers. This is a great option if your audience is less familiar with the university, or if your purpose is to place emphasis on praising the university for an audience more familiar with it. However, the sentence becomes very long with the addition of the second dependent clause (“which contributed…”)

Option B

“Carnegie Mellon. This university, a leader in Computer Science, contributed”

This option is also good because it also connects the already-known university name to its newly known title (“leading”); however, the connection is not as immediate as in the previous option, since it relies only on the pronoun (“this”). This option would work well if your audience is more familiar with the university, or if your purpose is not to emphasize this title.

Option C

“Carnegie Mellon. It is the leading university in Computer Science and contributed”

This option uses a pronoun (“It”) to connect the already-known university name to its title (“leading”). The connection between the two sentences is not very clear; this option may work only if you need to present information in small chunks, especially for audience reading the text very quickly.