Name: Ibrahim kuku

Class: English 110

Professor: Jorge Velez

Self-Assessment Essay

I was an International Baccalaureate (I.B) student during my highschool days. As a student that was automatically enrolled in the toughest and by far the most stressful international education program in the world, it made me feel a little bit special in a way that I thought I was invincible to writing. I am definitely one of the few smart people who unfortunately did not qualify for the IB diploma, but the program is not just offering the diploma alone, but also offering practice on now to handle college work, including the readings, the writings, e.t.c. One fun fact about me is that I hate reading to the extent that reading is my sleeping medication…  for a moment I will be awake, active, and fine, and my brain feels tired the second I start reading. On the other hand, writing is more of a choice that I prefer even though I won’t say I am perfect in my writing. In the beginning of my English 110 class, I wasn’t looking forward to learning anything new. My expectation is to just start writing whenever an essay is assigned to me because I was in a state of mind in which I deceived myself that I know absolutely everything that I needed to have at least on level Essay. A state of mind in which I always decide to stick with the same writing structure of MEAL (main idea, evidence, analysis, and link) I learned since 9th grade freshman year. To think about it now from an advanced point of view, I think it’s possible that I am just not ready to leave my comfort zone of what I already know about writing, or my subconscious crawls into an inactive, lazy mode that keeps me away from exploring other means of writing. Over the short period of time I have spent in English 110 class, I can prove that I have improved my writing skills to a great extent because I have learned more about writing like cover letters, rhetorical precis, academic summaries, the use of synthesis,  and many more techniques.

My first essay this semester for English 110 was titled Written Language & literacy Narrative. The essay is about writing about anything related to literacy and language. In my case, I wrote about my native language which is Yoruba. The format I used was very advantageous to me because I speak english and yoruba, therefore all i did was to compare how yoruba language, culture and tradition is different to that of english language. To be specific, most of my writing involves how yoruba words don’t translate the same to show respect and discipline when converted to english. Throughout my entire life of writing, this was the first step of me realizing that there is more to writing an essay than just writing. With this writing, I was also asked to include a cover letter which was very hard for me to do at first because I only think of a cover letter in terms of job resume and job application. In reality, this was easy with the guideline I followed. I figured out that a cover letter is just a pure writing of what I want the reader to know about my writing before reading, or a piece of writing that will provide clarity to the audience. After the first cover letter, I have written other cover letters but the difference is that they don’t scare me or provide challenges as my first time did.

As a part of learning during my first semester, the plan of my English professor is to learn little by little, which will then add up to make an overall outcome. After learning about cover letters, I was expected to make a cover letter for every single essay that comes after the language & linguistic Narrative Essay. The next important part of writing I learn is rhetorical precision, and Academic summary. The purpose of rhetorical precision is to build up a perfect Academic summary of sources. In some cases, before the learning of rhetorical precis, I make use of rhetorical precis in a non perfect way without me knowing the format I am using. But as I was introduced to the rhetorical precision of writing, It became clearer that I was able to see some familiarity in terms of my introduction of author name and background while writing a paper, and I was able to improve on this part as well. Before writing my researched essay, I wrote a rhetorical precis draft for amy tan that reads:

Amy Tan is a first generation Chinese American who wrote about her personal opinion of

the English language and how it differs in different countries where English is spoken using her

personal interactions with her mother which influenced her personal opinion. She supports this

by using different scenarios she goes through. She used her mother’s broken English as a form of

evidence to support her claim. Initially, her purpose is to inform the world the struggles language

and literacy discrimination has caused to the people affected.

In the rhetorical precise example drafted, the breakdown includes the content the author is writing about , support of the contents, then filled by the purpose of the author, and then lastly the relationship of the author and the intended audience. In a similar format but different notation, rhetorical analysis is also a form of writing that I knew but made perfect when I wrote my second essay for this semester in English 110 called Researched essay. With a researched essay, the analysis makes up the majority of the whole essay because it is mostly about deeply analyzing scholarly and other types of sources. 

After learning about rhetorical precis and making use of it in my writing, the next writing tool I also learn and use in my essay is called synthesis. Synthesis is the art of connecting two or more similar but different pieces of evidence together to prove a point in the same paragraph with high level fluency and sensibility. While using my meal form of writing body paragraphs, it doesn’t teach me how to connect two pieces of evidence together in a single paragraph which is where synthesis comes in. Normally, I like to use more than one evidence in my paragraphs but I usually use different evidence from the same authors/book. With the practice of synthesis, I was able to connect two rhetorical precis together to make one big paragraph that supports a claim without disrupting the fluency.

My writing has developed in many different aspects. It has developed by increasing my level of creativity in my paragraphs. For example, starting from the making of a cover letter, to the implementation of rhetorical precis, then to the use of synthesis, connect two precis together. I also learn to use rhetorical choice to connect and analyze my evidence. Overall, I think I have come a long way to achieve different styles of writing which I very much appreciate because it has upgraded the way I write from high school essay writing to college level writing standard.