Guided textual analysis (Paper 1)
Guided textual analysis (Paper 1)
Paper 1 presents unseen non-literary material with a guiding question. SL candidates have 1 hour 15 minutes; HL candidates have 2 hours 15 minutes and are expected to sustain a more developed analysis. The paper tests your ability to read a text’s rhetorical and visual design, not to identify it as “literature”.
Core rules and concepts
- Start with the guiding question: it tells you what kind of claim to build.
- Establish text type, speaker, audience, purpose, register and context from the text itself.
- Analyze language (lexis, syntax, modality, figurative language), structure (paragraphing, sequencing) and visual or multimodal features (layout, colour, image-text relation).
- Write a thesis that answers the question, then organize body paragraphs by rhetorical effect or technique.
- Use short, precise quotations and explain how each supports the thesis.
Worked example
A travel blog opens: “You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten noodles at 6 a.m. in Hanoi.” The hyperbole and second-person address construct the reader as insufficiently experienced; the imperative-like tone invites emulation. The paragraph then shifts to a practical list of prices, mixing intimacy with advice. Reasoning: identify the opening move, quote it, name the effect, and link it to the blog’s dual purpose of entertainment and guidance. The conclusion should state how the text positions its reader, not whether the trip was good.
Traps that cost marks
- Ignoring the guiding question.
- Feature-spotting without effects.
- Writing a literature-style commentary on a non-literary text.
- No thesis or no conclusion.
- Quoting at length without analysis.
- Running out of time because you planned too little.