Summer Assignment

Extended Essay Revision & Reflection

Due: In class. On the first day of school.

For this portion of your summer homework, you will take into consideration all of the feedback you received from your IB supervisor at the end of your junior year and complete an EXTENSIVE revision of your Extended Essay. This is more than just an edit, this is a complete overhaul.

It is time to ruthlessly cut unnecessary information, add that primary research your paper lacks, make more central YOUR argument and analysis, reorganize your paper, essentially you need to tear it apart and put it back together.

You also need to complete the interim reflection on your Reflections on Planning and Progress form wherein you discuss the research you've done until this point, the additional research you did over the summer, the gaps and mistakes in your first draft, and how you adjusted your paper and argument after receiving feedback from your supervisor.

You must bring a hard copy of both your Extended Essay and your reflection form to class on the first day of school.

Text Types & Conventions of Genre

Due: In class. On the second day of school.

For this portion of your summer homework, you will create a study guide and reference for the first part of the year and half of the IB English syllabus. You will create an inventory of non-fiction text types along with their genre conventions. In AP Lang, you learned about rhetorical devices and how they contribute to the making of meaning in a text. For IB Lang & Lit, those ideas will be expanded and we will look not just at the way language makes meaning in a text, but how the stylistic and structural features particular to each text type can be manipulated to make meaning in a text.

Organize the inventory in the way that makes the most sense to you, but 1) it must be handwritten/drawn/etc. and 2) you must bring a hard copy to class on the second day of school. Be thorough; you will be randomly assigned to present on one of these text types at the start of the school year. You will want to be prepared.

Get on the line, and research each of the following text types, their particular stylistic and structural conventions, and create a study guide for each text type that you are able to add to and modify over the course of the year as we encounter text. You will likely have to visit multiple sites to gather all of the necessary information.

  • Advertisement
  • Articles (newspapers & magazines)
  • Blog/diary
  • Brochure/leaflet/flier
  • Non-academic essay
  • Interview
  • Letter
  • Speech
  • News report
  • Magazine covers
  • Review
  • Travel writing
  • Website

To help you, here is a deconstructed magazine article. Not only should this help you to create your study guide for articles, it should serve as a model for your other text-type research. In addition to the information included in the link above, you should comment on the typical style of writing (reflective, objective, didactic, etc.), appeals (to patriotism, to authority, to fraternity, to divinity, etc.), and tone(s) employed by authors of each text type.

Application of Text Types

Due: In class. On the second day of school.

1. Create two pairs of two texts representing at least two different types (ex. a speech and a magazine cover/a blog and a webpage.) Each pair should explore a common theme in two different ways (ex. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's speech at the Wellesley College Commencement ceremony and a Cosmopolitan magazine cover both explore issues of femininity and womanhood for different audiences and to different ends.) Each pairing should have its own theme for exploration. For example, my first pairing above was about women's issues; therefore, I should NOT choose that as the theme for my second pairing.

2. For each text write a thorough analysis of the text's central message, its relationship to its audience (context & exigency), and its purpose. You learned these skills in AP Lang, so you've totally got this!

3. Create and complete a graphic organizer for each text wherein you identify at least 7 stylistic or structural conventions in the text, explain their purpose, and discuss their effect(s) on their particular audiences. The titles of your columns for this graphic organizer should read something like: Stylistic/Structural Features & Conventions; Example in Text; Purpose; Effect on Audience. Remember that everything (language, images, layout, font, colors, systems of organization, etc.) is fair game for analysis in IB Lang & Lit!

4. Finally, for each pairing, write a 500-700 word comparative analysis wherein you discuss the similarities and differences in the two texts. For this analysis you could discuss: the text's overall messages, their tones, audiences, or conventions. I do not expect you to discuss all of the similarities and differences present in these texts, but to choose the 3-4 most significant items for discussion. In this analysis, you should discuss not only HOW these texts are similar and different, but WHY they are similar and different.