Writing Interests

ALEX CARPENTER
First piece of Writing:
My Extended Essay
on Shostakovich's 5th
Symphony
Written as a required assignment
enable to complete the IB program
at my high school
Could be about anything, I chose to
write about music.
Passion for playing music plays a role
in why I wrote about this topic.
Process for writing this paper:
1. Discover the piece of music
2. Conduct historical research on the piece.
(Who composed it, why it was composed,
what was the purpose of this piece of music,
etc.)
3. Listen to the piece of music over and over
again.
4. Find a score to the piece of music again and
listened to the piece again with the score.
5. Disected and analyzed specific meaningful
moments in the piece and how they
contributed to what Shostakovich was trying
to accomplish.

Involved personal study. (Listening to 6. Write a rough draft of the paper.

the symphony over and over again) 7. Revision. (2-3 times)
8. Finalize the paper.

Second piece of
Writing: Paper 2:
Leviathan
Written for the purpose of
analyzing a discourse community
of my choice.
Passion for playing video-games
plays a role in why I wrote this
piece.
Also involves field study (Playing
the video-game for extended
periods of time.)
Process for writing this paper:
1. Explore the topic of the paper. (Discourse communities,
activity system, etc.)
2. Consider possible ideas for the paper, eventually deciding on
the Leviathan raid community.
3. Play the game to gain insight into how the community
functions and how players communicate and find each
other.
4. Find ways where the community can improve and become
more efficient at accomplishing their goals.
5. Write an outline for the paper. (Using powerpoint)
6. Write the first draft based upon fleshing out the ideas
presented in the outline.
7. Have the paper go under peer-review to find strong and
weak points within the paper to revise it.
8. Revise the paper based upon the peer-review feedback.
9. Second revision process made by reading the paper like an
oral presentation for the sake of cohesiveness.
10. Submit final draft.
Comparison of both papers:

Both papers played an important role in my academic career.

In both papers I had the ability to choose my research field, thus
granting me the ability to write about a topic I had a lot of interest
in.
The differences between these papers arise from the difference of
each respective subject matter, as well as my knowledge about
writing, which resulted in differences between the writing processes
of each paper.
In writing this paper Im currently thinking of analyzing the
differences in the writing processes of both papers to reveal how I
have grown as a writer over the past year.