IB English Lang Lit SL

Three components: a Paper 1 guided textual analysis of unseen non-literary texts, a Paper 2 comparative essay on two literary works studied, and an internally assessed individual oral on a literary work and a non-literary body of work connected to a global issue. Your teacher assesses the oral and the IB moderates it. Confirm current weightings and timings on the IB website.

Paper 1 and Paper 2 each give you a choice of prompts, and you write one response. The IB publishes the current durations and mark allocations, and they can change between guide versions, so check the official subject guide rather than relying on secondhand timings.

SL covers the same conceptual ground with less volume: fewer works studied and no Higher Level Essay. The analysis expected is still precise and evidence-driven, so the difference is breadth and independence rather than a lower standard of thinking. Candidates who read closely and write clearly often find SL very manageable.

Retake arrangements, including which components can be resat and in which session, are set by the IB and your school's exam office. Ask your coordinator early, because coursework and oral marks may need to be carried or reassessed. The IB publishes the current retake rules.

Practise on unfamiliar texts under time. For each one, identify audience, purpose, context, and the specific stylistic choices that do the work, then write a thesis-driven analysis rather than a feature-spotting list. Annotate one short non-literary text every week and get feedback on structure, not just identification.

Pick a global issue that genuinely interests you and that both your literary work and non-literary body of work speak to in different ways. Extract two or three short passages from each that you can analyse in detail. The strongest orals are built on precise extracts, not broad summaries of whole works.

Describing what a text says instead of analysing how it means; ignoring context and audience; quoting without commenting on technique; and writing a list of devices with no argument. In the oral, the usual failures are reading out memorised notes and losing the link to the global issue.

Start with the shared concepts - audience, purpose, context, style - and apply them to short non-literary texts before moving to literature. Build comparative notes on your set works as you read them, and begin collecting oral material early so you can refine extracts over several weeks rather than cramming.

Paper 2 is closed book in most sessions, so short, precise quotations help, but accurate paraphrase and clear reference to specific moments often serve you better than long memorised passages. Learn a handful of key quotations per work and practise weaving them into an argument.

Yes. The emphasis on evidence-based argument, close reading of real-world texts, and independent oral presentation maps well onto humanities and social science study. It does not by itself grant credit; check individual university policies for recognition.