Farooq Salam

English 

Lobell

10/15/2023

Cover Letter for Peer Profile

Creating a peer profile was an interesting assignment that allowed me to get to learn and know Karla better. I am most proud of the way I detailed the past experiences of Karla and some of the specific memories she discussed in her interview and in her narrative. I was able to use actual quotes that Karla said in the interview to show these experiences. 

Some of the rhetorical devices that I used in this peer profile are ethos and pathos, in which I described her experiences using an emotional appeal similar to what Karla used in her narrative. I emphasized and highlighted the struggles that she experienced at a young age and how she overcame it which showed her emotional development. I used ethos by adding quotes that Karla said in her interview, which gave credible sources because Karla is (obviously) an expert on her own life. 

Writing this profile helped connect me with the larger course themes of language politics by exposing me to a different type of narrative. In other words, Karla and I wrote our narratives in different ways and I don’t mean in the form of structure or that we answered different prompts. I mean that you can tell the difference in the way we speak from our narratives, and writing this profile showed me that even though we write in different ways, both of our narratives were just as good in showing the moments and experiences we had with language in our past. 

The audience of my peer profile are mainly the people who gave Karla a hard time when she was adjusting to a new life. Those teachers that turned her down or her bullies should know that making Karla’s life more difficult whether intentionally or unintentionally did not slow her down, and she overcame her struggles and the struggles have only made her stronger and more prepared for any future experiences. 

Peer Profile

It is always an eye opener when you learn about someone else’s story whether it was a struggle they had to overcome or an experience that taught them a life lesson and my peer’s was no different. Karla Louis immigrated from the Dominican Republic at the age of 10. She could not speak English and had to leave almost everything she knew from her childhood behind to a foreign land. 

When Karla moved here she immediately didn’t fit in, especially in school. She described it as leaving everything behind and having to start her life all over again. She found it incredibly difficult to speak and feel comfortable with the new environment. In her new environment she felt dumb and behind compared to her peers, which didn’t seem fair because she was a great student back home. She was also a very shy student and didn’t like to speak even when she did start learning a bit of English which became a problem in later years when she felt that even though she could understand English her vocabulary didn’t match that of her peers. “People say you have to talk to people while learning a new language but I was shy and didn’t want to speak to people and that was a mistake,” said Karla. Having to overcome her feeling of shyness was another obstacle that Karla was forced to face alongside learning a new language and being an immigrant. 

“I had a friend who moved to the US too and she couldn’t speak English and was also bullied for it and that was someone I could relate to,” said Karla. Having someone that you can relate to in a common struggle is always a blessing and makes hardship easier to go through which Karla was clearly grateful for during the interview. Now that she can speak both English and Spanish, she sometimes struggles with blending both languages by accident because she speaks Spanish at home and English with everyone else. 

The emotional appeal and pathos in Karla’s narrative is evident. She clearly expresses the emotions that were brought with the experiences she had whilst adjusting to living in a new country. When she says “the interview was done by a woman who said to me that they don’t accept students who don’t speak English, that made me feel insecure and dumb because even though I didn’t speak English fluently, I understand most things clearly.” This part of her narrative helped me truly grasp the frustration that she had with some of the things in her life that were out of her control. The school that was interviewing her wasn’t even truly evaluating her based on her intellect and characteristics but rather her ability to speak a language fluently which she only recently began to learn. 

Karla also uses imagery and paints specific scenarios in her narrative to actually show why and what her thought process was during those moments. For example in her narrative she says “Every day at school, I was left to watch videos and do activities on a computer to help me learn English, and once a week, a counselor came to help me learn English. Which I felt wasn’t useful at all. As time passed, I received help from a teacher to teach me English. He brought books and helped me with practice assignments to learn English, which was helpful because I had the basic information to communicate even a little with others in a different language.” This specific part of her narrative paints the picture of the days where she was actually learning the language and the methods that did and didn’t work for her. From the picture she paints, it’s evident that she struggled to do independent study and the school didn’t realize that until later when they sent her a teacher to actually work with her instead of leaving her on her own. The teacher helping her practice her language skills gave her a sense of hope that she was actually starting to work towards her goal of being able to speak to other people comfortably; her imagery illustrates the gratefulness and sense of relief that she had from the teacher helping her. 

In her interview you can tell that she has grown and learned a lot from her experience and struggle of immigrating to a new country and adjusting her life essentially in 180 degrees. “I don’t feel comfortable writing about my feelings which makes it most difficult for me because the narrative needs and brings emotions up,” said Karla. Despite having conflicted feelings from the past which even included moments of bullying because of the way she spoke and her inability to speak English, Karla still manages to write a strong piece of narrative and express her feelings openly in her interview which is extremely admirable. The readers of her narrative will be able to tell the different parts of her journey as an immigrant in the United States. The struggle she experienced in the beginning while the climax of her journey was when she felt the most down and hopeless that she wouldn’t be able to fully adjust to her new life. She even learned new methods of conquering her struggles such as journaling which she uses to channel all of her emotions without having to worry about what other people think or say.

The second phase of the course had an interesting assignment which was to create a profile on one of our peers. One aspect of this assignment that I liked was that we got to know our peers at a deeper level than we get to do in most of our other classes. We were able to share our stories and narratives of whatever life experiences we chose to discuss and how it impacted on us a significant level, how it developed us, what it taught us and how our reactions are looking back at them now.

I think the ability to understand one another and getting to know each other is something that is usually neglected at CUNY colleges because of the lack of opportunities to actually make real friendships. Though this might not have given life long friends it did give us the opportunity to meet strangers.

Furthermore, constructing a peer profile made us look at other people around us with less of a self-imposed image. As humans we naturally think more about ourselves and how our own problems affect us and which way our own life is going. We don’t usually look at other people and wonder how their problems are going and how they have valuable experiences that are different from ours, that they probably live completely different lives than us. One aspect of this assignment that I did not particularly like was that there wasn’t a more rigid outline for what the peer profile needed to include like there was for the narrative. I think that would have made it significantly easier to construct the profile and even get to know my peer better. I think that was a valuable part of this assignment and I enjoyed writing the peer profile.

In this modern era where digital media has become the norm, it seems like writing isn’t a useful skill that’s worth learning anymore. However, writing can still serve multiple purposes and is just as much a useful skill now as it was back then.

Bringing it back to the basics, when students are learning in class, writing notes as opposed to typing them or just listening to the teacher speak, is usually a much more effective method of learning. This is because when you write you’re more likely to be thinking about the information that is being given to you, hence it can stay in your memory longer and be more readily available. Even when writing notes for your job, your more likely to remember them and actually think more thoughtfully about your analysis if your actually writing it as opposed to just thinking about it. Even though typing is still a form of writing, the physical writing generally serves a better ability to conveying things to memory.

Whether we like it or not, writing is always going to be a part of everyday life even if handwriting isn’t as common anymore. We still have to write when it comes to jobs, such as writing cover letters, writing recommendations for subordinates, writing compelling narratives even for the purpose of immigration such as applying people from overseas.

The phase one of this course was interesting as it consisted of an assignment that I was not accustomed too from my 12 years in the NYC public school system. I could reflect on a specific moment in my past that actually had something to do with language development and understanding of other people. Other parts of Phase 1 such as working with my peers during classwork were helpful as they allow me to slowly get out of my comfort zone and speak to new people. Another thing I liked about Phase 1 was that we had the option to choose whatever moment we wanted from our life and it wasn’t something that was predetermined by the prompt.

One thing I disliked about Phase 1 is that there was a minimum amount of 4.5-5 pages that was required to be able to get an A. I think that aspect of the assignment only forced me to make my writing more repetitive so that I could fulfill that requirement. I would like to think quality matters more than quantity. Overall, I think I learned quite a bit about myself, my writing and past experiences that have a bigger impact on me than I think from Phase 1 and it makes me excited for the upcoming phases.