Word Processing Lesson - Sample Cover Letter

 

Goal
To develop skills that will help learners find a job.

Objective
Learners will type a sample cover letter to practice writing a business letter, using tabs and indentations, and also to create a letter which can serve as a template for their own cover letters.

Skills
Keyboarding; basic word processing: using the mouse, cursor and insertion point, deleting and backspacing, basic text formatting (bolding, centering and enlarging text) using tabs and indentations

Prerequisite skills
Basic word processing

Time
About 45 minutes - 1 hour

Related Activities
Resume, Mail Merge to a List of Personal Contacts

Instructor’s Note
The instructions below are written for Microsoft Word. You will need to modify the steps if you use another word processing program.

Activity
1. Pass out copies of the sample cover letter handout.

2. To maximize the practice with indentations and tabs, they can make two versions: the first, like the handout with no tabs or indenting, and the second which gives them a chance to explore things like tabs vs. the indent arrows, indenting multiple lines, indenting the first line of multiple paragraphs using Format->Paragraph->Indent First Line, indenting vs. right justifying for alignment.