IB English Literature A 11 and IB English Literature A SL 12

Course Outline

IB English Literature A SL students will focus exclusively on literary texts, adopting a variety of approaches to textual criticism. Students explore the nature of literature, the aesthetic function of literary language and textuality, and the relationship between literature and the world. The course typically encourages a wide range of responses in the context of both written, oral course work, the formal examination, and a mixture of creative and analytical enquiry throughout its various components. The course allows for much room in which to address the value of literature as a means of representing, shaping, or challenging students’ sense of human experience, and the world in general.

The teacher of the English A1 SL course must select a total of 9 works.  A minimum of four works originally written in English, and a minimum of three works originally written in a language other than English, from works found in the IB Prescribed Reading List (PRL).  Two works can be freely chosen from the PRL or elsewhere. There are three areas of exploration:  Readers, writers and texts; time and space; intertextuality and connecting texts.  The works selected must cover a range of literary forms, periods, and countries or regions.

The final grade comprises an external component of 70 percent and an internal component of 30 percent. The internal component (30 percent) is an individual recorded oral commentary which requires students to respond to an extract from works studied.  The external component (70 percent) is a final examination which consists of two papers; paper one requires students to write one guided literary analysis on one of two works presented; paper two requires students to write a comparative essay based on two works studied.


For more information please go to: https://ibo.org/