The English Literature HL Assessment is made up of four parts:
The Individual Oral (20% of the assessment score)
The HL Essay (20% of the assessment score)
Paper 1 of the written exam - a Guided literary analysis (35% of the assessment score)
Paper 2 of the written exam - a Comparative essay (25% of the assessment score)
The Individual Oral
For this assessment students will interact with their IB English teacher in a one-on-one recorded setting. The student will choose two extracts (one from a work written originally in English and one from a work studied in translation) then offer a prepared response of 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions by the teacher on the prompt: "Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of two of the works you have studied." Each of these extracts should be no more than 40 lines long, and should clearly represent the presence of the chosen Global Issue.
Official "Assessment Overview" from the IB Guide - this document is written for teachers of the course, but can be read by students who want to see exactly what the assessment will be about and how it is graded. Pages 60-62 have particularly good information on the requirements of the Individual Oral.
The HL Essay
Students submit an essay on one work studied during the course.
The essay must be 1200-1500 words in length.
Official "Assessment Overview" from the IB Guide - this document is written for teachers of the course, but can be read by students who want to see exactly what the assessment will be about and how it is graded.
Paper 1 of the written exam
This paper of the exam begins with a 5-minute reading period, and then is 2 hours and 15 minutes of active testing time. On this paper you will be provided two literary texts that you haven't seen before. You will be asked to write a guided analysis about each of the two texts.
Specimen Paper - this is a sample of exactly what Paper 1 will look like on exam day
Official "Assessment Overview" from the IB Guide - this document is written for teachers of the course, but can be read by students who want to see exactly what the assessment will be about and how it is graded.
Paper 2 of the written exam
This paper of the exam begins with a 5-minute reading period, and then is 1 hour and 45 minutes of active testing time. On this paper you will be given four questions and asked to respond to one of them. Each of the questions will ask you to compare and contrast two of the works you studied.
Specimen Paper - this is a sample of exactly what Paper 2 will look like on exam day
Official "Assessment Overview" from the IB Guide - this document is written for teachers of the course, but can be read by students who want to see exactly what the assessment will be about and how it is graded.