Please note:  The purpose of this information is to elaborate on the nature of the IB assessment tasks, define and explain the assessment criteria and their implications, share observed challenges in students’ submitted assessment work, and offer strategies and approaches for assessment preparation.   

This post is not meant to replace a reading of the IB Language A: Literature Subject Guide or the Teacher Support Materials available on My IB.  Those resources should always be a first stop for teachers in checking the requirements of each assessment task and how the task should be facilitated.   

Paper 1 Overview

35% at SL and HL

Nature of the task

• Students are asked to engage with never-before-seen non-literary text(s) with the help of a guiding question. Examination papers may contain complete texts or excerpts of texts. 
  • Students are not obligated to use the guiding question to direct their response; however, if they do not, they need to choose another formal or technical aspect of the text as a focus instead.¹ (See Criterion C for “Focus.”) 
  • In general, the guiding questions will draw students’ attention either to a) a specific technique, element, or authorial choice that contributes to meaning or b) a specific meaning/effect of the text whose creation students then must attribute authorial choices to. 

• SL students complete one of the guided analyses provided in 1 hour and 15 minutes, while HL students complete two in 2 hours and 15 minutes. This means HL students have about 1 hour and 5 minutes per analysis with time to look back over responses. 

Nature of the texts

There is a list of non-literary text types in the Language A Guide². In past exams we have seen a wide variety of text types including a letter, an infographic, articles from tourism websites, an appeal to donate money, a website with a product description and reviews of the product, an interview, a satirical dialogue published on a cartoon site, an excerpt from an autobiography, an excerpt from a business manual, and more. 

What is the Paper 1 Assessing?

Criterion A:  Understanding and Interpretation (5 marks)

Defined Terms

Understanding	For this assessment, “understanding” refers to a grasp of the literal meaning of the text: what the author seems to be trying to achieve, whether that be to explore an idea, inform, persuade, entertain, etc. Students may also need to demonstrate an understanding of the basic elements of the text’s publication like when and where it was published and for whom, as this may be crucial in understanding the literal meaning of the text.
Interpretation	An interpretation moves beyond literal understanding into a series of inferences, or “reasoned conclusions” drawn from the subtleties and implications of a text.  With non-literary texts, this “meaning” is often thought of as the “author’s purpose” but works might also communicate meaning to a reader unintended by the author.
Implications	Implications refer to the ideas the text may be suggesting without explicitly stating them or feelings the work may be evoking without explicitly telling the viewer or audience to feel them.
Reasoned conclusions	A reasoned conclusion is a logical inference derived from the implications made by the text.
References to the text	Students are expected to make references to the text that can either be direct quotes, paraphrases, or descriptions of visuals. Depending on what claim they are making, one may be more appropriate than the other (claims about language and style often benefit from direct quotes; broader authorial choices can be explained through paraphrase.)

Notes

• Though students are asked to provide a “focused” analysis as per Criterion C, they should also attempt to portray an overall understanding of the text. One way this can be done is by a succinct description of the text’s “general situation” in the introduction of the response. 
• There are a few traps some students fall into when it comes to evidence use:  
  – Some students use evidence for the purpose of summarizing or showing basic understanding of the text rather than supporting their interpretations.  
  – Some students use evidence from only one part of the text, use quotes that are too long or short, or write vague paraphrases of certain parts of the text.  
• At the higher levels, the relationship between understanding and interpretation is inextricable: a “thorough” understanding of the literal meaning of the text will often lead to insightful interpretations as well.  A strong student might show understanding and interpretation of the text through references to moments where even the literal meaning of the text might be obscured through subtleties and apparent contradictions. 

Activities and protocols that develop skills related to knowledge, understanding, and interpretation.

Criterion B:  Analysis and Evaluation (5 marks)

Defined Terms

Analysis	To analyze is to separate and identify the parts of a whole to discover various interrelationships. The “whole” in the case of the Paper 1 is the extract or text.  One can begin to breakdown the parts of a text by considering its form, mode, structure, and use of language.
Textual features and/or authorial choices	Textual features and authorial choices are the parts that make up the whole as referenced above. In non-literary texts such as the ones assessed on the L&L Paper 1, these can include aesthetic features (images, graphs, bold, italics, etc.), organizational features (such as a table of contents, headings, index, etc.), supplemental features (such as a glossary, footnotes, primary source material, captions, etc.), literary features (such as figurative language, analogies, conceits, etc.), and linguistic features (such as rhetoric, sentence structure, ellipses, parentheses, etc.).
Evaluation	When students “evaluate” they are calculating the importance and value of the author’s choices in the context of their interpretive meanings.  After students separate and identify the “parts of the whole” through analysis, students show appreciation for which features play a significant role in developing interpretive meaning, specifically in relation to the guiding question or their chosen focus for analysis.

Notes

• The identification of authorial choices, whether they be visual, rhetorical, formal, or literary, can only get students so far. These features should be mentioned only if they support claims about the effect of those choices on the text’s audience in relation to the guided focus of the response.  
• Students who focus too much on “small” details of the text, like language devices, without considering the fundamental “purpose” of the text type or the aspect they’ve decided to focus on, run the risk of missing the big picture. Students should be encouraged to identify and analyze “larger” aspects of the text like structural choices, lines of argumentation (when the text is argumentative), speaker-audience relationship, etc. as well as more traditionally analyzed textual features. 
• Part of what this criterion assesses is the student’s familiarity with a variety of non-literary text types and their corresponding conventions. Examiners do not expect every student to study every text type, but they at least hope that students can make evidence-based assumptions about a text based on general understandings they’ve developed throughout the course about different kinds of texts.  
• When the wording of the guiding question provides the student with an effect of the text and asks them to identify the elements of the text that contribute to that effect, evaluating authorial choices is particularly important. When a specific feature or set of features of the text is “given” in the question and students are asked to identify the effect, they will have to use their judgment to decide what effect(s) to critically elaborate on.

Activities and protocols that develop skills related to analysis and evaluation

Criterion C:  Focus and organization (5 marks)

Defined terms

Focus	A focused response sustains its attention on the guiding question or student-selected aspect.
Organized presentation of ideas	Students have made thoughtful choices about the order in which they present their claims, references to the text, analysis, and explanation so that the points in the response build upon one another, producing a cohesive response to the text.

Notes

• Encouraging “logical development” in responses over pre-planned structures often helps students maintain focus and achieve cohesion, especially for students who are relatively proficient at critical thinking.  Students should ask themselves, “How can I present my ideas in a way that best answers the guiding question/develops my chosen point of focus?” 
• Responses organized by authorial choices tend to be limiting because they struggle to appreciate the interdependency of features’ effects in communicating meaning, expressing feelings, or creating an experience.  

Activities and protocols that develop skills related to organization and focus

Criterion D:  Language (5 marks)

Defined terms

Clear language	Language is clear when the selection of words and the arrangement of words effectively articulate meaning.
Varied language	Language is varied when the student uses different words to acutely communicate knowledge, understanding, and meaning.
Accuracy	Language is accurate when it uses grammatically correct structures, spelling, and capitalization.
Register	The “register” refers to the style of the written language.

Notes

• A wider vocabulary gives students more language tools to express abstract and complex thought, and this should be a consideration when teaching the course.   
• A student’s correct use of terminology fitting for the study of language and literature may be considered in awarding marks in this criterion; however, jargon is not the sole focus.   
• Students are encouraged to use the language they have while exploring their own authentic ideas.  When students use vocabulary and sentence structures that are comfortably in their repertoire, they usually express their thinking with more clarity which helps every criterion.   
• A response does not need to be flawless in terms of its language to earn a 5 in this criterion.   
• Voice is welcomed in all IB assessment tasks: formal writing does not need to be turgid. 

Activities and protocols that develop skills related to use of language

References

[1] Language A: Literature Guide, First assessment 2021, IBO: 2019. pp. 56.

[2] Language A: Literature Guide, First assessment 2021, IBO: 2019. pp. 57.

[3]  “10 tips for schools & teachers for the individual oral”. My IB Website, IBO: 2020.  

[4] Language A: Literature Guide, First assessment 2021, IBO: 2019. pp. 61.

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