Jacob Marzullo

IB English

May 21, 2024

Dr. Malashewski

Self- Assessment 3: Semester Four

With my first year of IB English coming to a close, I will be reflecting upon different aspects of

the year, the internal oral, my strengths and my weaknesses.

Overall, the internal oral exam revealed a lot about my reading comprehension and

analysis synthesis. I was able to do relatively well, scoring a 5 on the IB scale. I felt as though I

chose a strong global issue that was reflected, in depth, by the two texts: How imperialism

fragments communities. I feel that one of my strengths when completing the oral assessment was

the choice of the global issue. In both orals, the global issues were heavily related to the texts,

and well supported by the extracts. Additionally, they were both well developed ideas, especially

for my official IO. Another strength when it came to my orals was my knowledge, understanding

and interpretation. I felt as though I was able to grasp the intentions behind the texts as a whole.

Such as Tommy Orange’s intention to display the lives of native americans impacted by the

marginalization of their community or Satrapi’s depiction of coming of age in a changing

political climate. This aided me in supporting the claims made in my IOs and providing strong

points that related to my topic. For example, by understanding Tommy Orange’s intention behind

the text as stated previously, I can then connect that to the effects of imperialism, which is an

issue faced by many globally. Similarly, I can connect the texts together via my overarching

global issue, by understanding the ideas explored in the texts, such as colonization, racism etc.

Finally, another area that I felt was strong during my IO was my language. I was able to use
correct and accurate language during my assessment that helped me to stay concise in my

explanations. Although I was able to learn strengths about myself during the IO, I also had some

areas of weakness. The main area I think I could have improved upon in my internal assessments

were my analyses of the extracts and text examples. I think that going more in depth in my

extracts would have shown a better understanding of the text overall. Additionally, it would have

helped to better support claims I was making. Another area of improvement is my script. When

first planning my oral, I intended to use a script, but ended up switching to the intended format in

the end. I think that a script would have been better, because I would not have had to come up

with what I had to say completely on the spot, instead I would have had it memorized.

The IO helped me to work on time management because it required practice over the

course of a long period of time. I started to prepare for my oral exam a week and a half in

advance. This was adequate time for me to get used to my pacing and time allocation as well as

the major points I wanted to hit.

Overall, next year, I hope to improve on my writing skills and my poem analysis skills. I

have definitely improved on writing the past year due to not only IB English, but endless writing

as a result of the IB diploma program. But I always feel that I can improve my writing, especially

in clarity and flow. My poem analysis is my weakest skill in english. I struggle to understand

poems that are too obtuse, and therefore struggle to properly analyze the poem. I hope to get

better at this next year.

Dr. M, keep doing what you're doing, I’m confident that you will prepare me for whatever IB has

to throw at me.