IB English A HL essay: finding a line of inquiry and writing 1,500 words

The HL essay criteria

From the IB Language A guides (first assessment 2021). Essays over 1,500 words risk the examiner not reading beyond the limit. Works used here cannot be reused in Paper 2 or the Individual Oral.

The line of inquiry is everything

The line of inquiry is the question your essay sets out to answer. It usually grows out of the learner portfolio: something you noticed while studying the work that the class did not fully resolve. A strong line of inquiry is narrow, focused on authorial choices, and arguable. 'Women in a novel' is a subject. 'How does the novelist use shifts between first- and third-person narration to make the reader complicit in judging the heroine?' is a line of inquiry.

The IB links the essay to the course's areas of exploration and concepts (identity, culture, creativity, communication, perspective, transformation, representation), which can help frame a question. You do not need to name them; you do need to analyse how meaning is constructed, not just what the work is about.

Because the essay is only 1,500 words, depth beats range. Two or three well-chosen passages, analysed closely, will support an argument better than a survey of the whole work.

A route from idea to final draft

1. Review your learner portfolio for patterns, puzzles and moments you found interesting.
2. Draft three possible lines of inquiry and test each: is it narrow, about authorial choices, and arguable?
3. Choose the passages that best answer the question; aim for depth in two or three.
4. Write a thesis that answers the line of inquiry in one or two sentences.
5. Plan four or five paragraphs that each advance the argument.
6. Draft, then revise for focus: cut anything that does not serve the line of inquiry.
7. Check citations, the word count and the academic register.

Worked example: a line of inquiry and an opening

Line of inquiry (example, for a Literature student studying a play in which a family keeps a secret): 'How does the playwright use offstage events to show the cost of a family's silence?'

Model opening: 'The most important events in the play never happen on stage. A death, a confession and a departure are all reported rather than shown, and the audience learns of each one in fragments, through characters who have reasons to soften or withhold the truth. This essay argues that the playwright keeps these events offstage deliberately: by forcing the audience to piece together what the family will not say, the play reproduces the silence it criticises, and makes the audience feel its cost before the characters admit it.'

Why it works: the line of inquiry is narrow (offstage events), about an authorial choice (dramatic structure), and arguable (that the choice reproduces the silence it criticises). Every body paragraph can test that claim against a specific scene.

Common mistakes

• A line of inquiry that is a topic, not a question.
• Writing about theme without analysing authorial choices.
• Too many quotations from across the work and not enough depth on any of them.
• Plot summary to fill the word count.
• Ignoring form: a play, a novel, a poetry collection or a body of adverts each need different analysis.
• Going over 1,500 words, or leaving referencing inconsistent.

How one-to-one lessons help with the HL essay

The essay must be the student's own work, and IB rules limit how much feedback teachers can give on drafts. A tutor's job is therefore to strengthen the student's thinking and skills, not to edit the essay. The most valuable sessions come early: discussing the work, testing possible lines of inquiry with hard questions, and practising close analysis on passages the student is considering.

Tutors also teach the writing skills the essay needs, using other texts for practice: building an argued thesis, structuring paragraphs that advance an argument, embedding quotations and referencing accurately. The student then applies those skills to their own essay.

Self-check

• Is my line of inquiry a narrow, arguable question about authorial choices?
• Does my thesis answer it directly in the introduction?
• Does each paragraph advance the argument, not just add examples?
• Have I analysed two or three passages in depth?
• Have I addressed the form of the work?
• Am I between 1,200 and 1,500 words, with consistent referencing?