IB English A Paper 1: how to write a guided analysis

The four criteria (per text)

Criterion names and marks from the IB Language A guides (first assessment 2021). SL total 20 marks; HL total 40 marks across two texts. Paper 1 is weighted 35% at both SL and HL.

What the paper is testing

Paper 1 tests whether you can read an unfamiliar text closely and explain how it makes meaning. Each text comes with a guiding question that points to a technical or formal aspect (for example, how the writer uses contrast to persuade). You may use it or set your own focus, but you must have a focus: criterion C rewards a sustained line of argument, and an answer that walks through the text line by line rarely gets there.

For Language and Literature, think about text type and its conventions. An advert, an opinion column and a charity appeal each have recognisable features: layout, image and text relationships, headlines, calls to action, register. Analysis moves from noticing those features to explaining the choices behind them and their effect on a target audience. For Literature, the focus is literary form: narrative voice, imagery, structure, sound and rhythm in poetry, and the reader's shifting understanding.

Evaluation is part of criterion B. That means judging how effective a choice is, or noticing tensions in the text: a campaign that claims to empower readers while talking down to them, a narrator whose confidence the reader begins to doubt.

A structure for one analysis

1. Ten to fifteen minutes (SL) reading and annotating: text type, audience, purpose, the guiding question, three or four main techniques, and a shift or tension.
2. Thesis paragraph: what the text does, how, and why, in two or three sentences.
3. Three or four body paragraphs organised by idea or technique, each linking back to the thesis.
4. Short embedded quotations, with technical terms used to explain, not to label.
5. One evaluative move: how effective is this choice, for whom, and with what limits?
6. A brief conclusion that returns to purpose and audience.

Worked example on an original non-literary text

Text (written for this page): a water-saving poster for a Gulf city. Headline: 'Every drop has a journey.' Below, a photograph of a child's hand under a tap, the water caught mid-fall. Body copy: 'It travelled across the sea, through the desalination plant, along 300 kilometres of pipe, to reach you. Turn off the tap while you brush. Let its journey matter.' Guiding question: How does the text use narrative to persuade its audience?

Model paragraph: 'The poster persuades by turning a resource most readers take for granted into the hero of a story. The headline "Every drop has a journey" personifies water and promises a narrative, and the body copy delivers one through a sequence of places, from sea to plant to pipe, that makes the invisible infrastructure visible. Listing the distance, "300 kilometres", gives the journey weight and implies cost without stating it. The image completes the narrative: the child's hand places the end of the journey in a domestic, everyday moment, and because the water is caught mid-fall the reader is invited to imagine stopping it. The imperative "Turn off the tap" is softened by the final line, which frames the action as respect rather than restriction. The approach is effective for families, though by centring the individual household it leaves larger users of water out of the story.'

Why it scores: a clear interpretation (A), analysis of language, structure and image and an evaluative final sentence (B), a sustained focus on narrative (C), and precise, formal expression (D).

Common mistakes

• Line-by-line commentary with no line of argument.
• Feature spotting: 'There is a rhetorical question' with no account of its effect.
• Ignoring the visual elements of a non-literary text.
• Forgetting audience and purpose in Language and Literature.
• Retelling the narrative in a Literature passage instead of analysing it.
• HL: spending too long on the first text and rushing the second, though both carry equal marks.

How one-to-one lessons help with Paper 1

Paper 1 improves with volume and feedback, which a class rarely has time for. A tutor brings a new unseen text each week, matched to the student's course: adverts, cartoons, speeches and articles for Language and Literature, prose and poetry for Literature. The student annotates on the shared whiteboard, the tutor asks questions that push from noticing to explaining, and together they build a thesis.

Then the student writes timed analyses and the tutor marks them against criteria A to D, with one or two targets each time. HL students practise managing two texts in the time, and all students build a short glossary of terms for visual and rhetorical features so their analysis is precise.

Self-check

• Does my introduction state a clear interpretation, not just the topic?
• Is every paragraph linked to my thesis or the guiding question?
• Have I analysed visual, structural or formal features as well as words?
• Have I made at least one evaluative judgement?
• Are my quotations short and embedded?
• For HL: have I given both texts equal time?