Kadin Cariaga-Sayegusa

Dr. Malashewski
IB English HL I
May 17, 2024

Practice Paper 1 Reflection

The text that I analyzed was At the Gym by Mark Doty. Some of the literary elements of the poem

that I focused on were metaphor, symbolism, and repetition. I believed that these three elements were

connected to a border point I was trying to make that answered the question presented to me. During the

exam I felt very nervous that I would not be able to complete the amount of writing I needed to in time,

however looking back I could have budgeted more time to structuring and annotating because it sets up

how I able to analyze the texts more efficiently and effectively.

Some of the strong suits in the exam were my claims and my analysis of the text. I feel that my

claims were sound and could be backed up strongly with evidence. For example, my claim linking the

symbolism of weights as a meaningless task provided perspective into the seemingly surface level activity

of working out. As for my analysis, most of the time I felt on topic and I was not summarizing. This is

when I linked repetition, as I only briefly mentioned the context of the poem and spent most of the time

connecting the text and analyzing it rather than reiterating what was written beforehand.

I believe that I can improve in terms of language and structure. For language, there were

sometimes where I would use elementary words instead of words that would more accurately convey the

meaning of the text. Also some of the times I would use the wrong words and that would make the

sentence or even sentences look messy and non-concise. As for structure, I feel as if all my elements that

make up a paragraph and an essay are there, however the lack of flow makes it difficult for the reader to

follow along with my ideas. If I were to focus on building upon ideas and transitioning instead of halting

my train of thought completely and moving to a new topic, the exam would have flowed a lot better.

Two strategies to help the improvements are reading and writing, respectively. I feel that my lack

of understanding of higher level vocabulary and grammar comes from a lack of familiarity with the

source material. If I were to be able to find difficult texts then read and comprehend them, it would
translate more into the work I am doing. For my writing, more practice would be necessary and spending

more time re-reading what I am writing and focusing on relaxing in stressful situations would drastically

reduce the amount of careless mistakes I make.