Practice IB Paper 1 Reflection

My English class's practice Paper 1 for the IB provided an excellent opportunity to simulate Paper 1 settings and to practice writing under timed conditions. The paper compared and contrasted two unseen texts, which helped me practice my comparative writing skills and analytical skills all under the constraints of a time limit.

Upon reading over this paper, I believe that my understanding of the comparisons that could be made between the texts was solid overall, but my exploration of stylistic features demonstrated room for improvement. The two texts were a comic commenting on gender stereotyping babies and an excerpt from a memoir commenting on gender stereotyping, both toward babies and more generally for vocation and marriage. Before writing out my points, I made bullet points of the main differences and similarities of the texts in various aspects, including audience/purpose, content/theme, tone/mode, stylistic devices, and structure. I divided these by paragraphs (grouping stylistic devices and structure in one paragraph) which allowed me to thoroughly explore the similarities and differences of the texts in all these areas once I started writing. However, I mainly focused on language in my analysis, and while I analyzed the visual rhetoric used in the comic in my stylistic devices section, this could have been explored in more depth. In the future, I intend to use similar methods of outlining my ideas before writing them, but I want to be more careful to consider the different aspects of analysis brought to the table by different (visual) text types going forward.

While the organization of the paper was generally comprehensive, it was somewhat repetitive. I very carefully outlined my essay before writing it, setting up and introduction, body paragraphs (each of these focusing on a different element of the Big 5), and a conclusion. My introductory paragraph set up brief descriptions of the texts (mentioning authors) and introduced the main themes explored as well as a thesis. Each body paragraph had a topic sentence, explored its given element of the Big 5, and included quotes and analysis of quotes that supported the topic sentence. However, the paragraphs tended to cover some of the same point, two even including the same quote (although considered for different purposes), rendering the body of the paper a bit redundant. In addition, I ran out of time to complete my conclusion paragraph, so it was only a sentence or two long. In the future, I think I will still outline my work before writing it as I found that very useful, by I will perhaps cut down a bit on the outlining time so as to leave more time to write the paper. I will also explore ways in which I can explore the texts from different aspects while limiting redundancy. 

While there was some redundancy in word choice, the language of the Paper maintained a consistent tone and register. My peer-reviewer pointed out the repetition of the word 'different' throughout my paragraphs so I will work on preparing a vocabulary of comparative analysis before I complete the actual Paper 1. Other than that, the paper maintained a formal register throughout and the tone appeared consistent.

A friend and I have talked about perhaps doing a couple of extra practice Paper 1's over the winter break in order to get more used to the comparative style of writing. In general, I think that my point-by-point method of writing the paper was generally effective, but there were still several elements that can be improved with practice. I enjoy timed writing, analysis, and comparison, so I look forward to improving these apects of my writing in the future.