IB English Lang Lit Paper 1-Complete Guide for 7

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IB English Paper 1:Structuring a Body Paragraph—PETAL

Whenever you have to to write any sort of analytical paragraph in LangLit, whether for an exam paper, a written task, or something else, follow this general format of PETAL—Point, Evidence, Technique, Analysis, and Link.

Point:

• State exactly what you’re going to discuss in your paragraph—your main point/topic, so to speak (this should be your paragraph’s 1st sentence)

  • This should be a specific thing, e.g. thematic idea, stylistic device(s), context, etc.—don’t be vague!

  • Your point should answer the three main LangLit questions.

  • Make your point clear enough that anyone listening to you/reading your response should be able to understand what you’ll be going on to argue right away

    • Seriously. IB examiners when you clearly signpost what you’re going to say before you say it, so do it.

Evidence:

• Provide evidence related to your texts that demonstrate the arguments made in your Point. This includes:

  • Quotes from your text. Cite exact locations for this: page numbers, line numbers, acts/scenes, etc.

  • Paraphrasing from your text. Use this for larger chunks of your text where you’re not looking explicitly at language (e.g. diction).

  • Contextual information, e.g. societal/cultural influences & norms from when the text was originally written.

Technique:

• Identify the specific formal techniques/features (rhetorical techniques, stylistic devices, etc.) present in the evidence you just provided.

  • In each quote you cite, what devices, rhetorical appeals, etc. are being used?

  • You can more or less skip this for contextual info.

Analysis:

• Analyze the effectiveness of said features in your evidence in conveying a certain effect on the audience.

  • Is tone, mood, or atmosphere created?

  • Is the author using a rhetorical appeal, stylistic device, etc. in your evidence to make an argument of some sort?

  • Does this evidence develop a theme in your text?

  • For context, how does the contextual information you just provided influence the text’s narrative, use of language, etc. and/or a reader’s interpretation of the text?

Link:

• Link everything you just said—your point & supporting evidence/analysis—back to your thesis (i.e. overall argument).

  • You must explain everything in terms of the overall arguments you’re making! Otherwise you’re just yeeting out irrelevant points, which in the context of a larger analysis—well, this ain’t it, chief.

2. To see this in action, see this example PETAL paragraph (shortened from an actual Paper 1 response). Relevant parts have been highlighted in the same colours as used above.

This text utilizes emotive language to create a somber, elegiac tone, emphasizing the despair of the victim of HIV in question. For instance, the effect of HIV is described as “debilitating”; the need of those in poor countries without access to HIV/AIDS medication—“victims”—as “desperate”, while the epidemic itself is described as “[leaving] people in its wake”. The emotive diction in these loaded words & phrases used to describe the negative effects & consequences of HIV appeal to the reader’s emotions, convincing the reader of the epidemic’s severity and evoking thought of natural disasters (namely, floods/storms). Thus, the text conveys a warning of the danger of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa through emotive language, namely diction.

Elements of Graphics & Visuals

Some text types (e.g. comics, infomercials/ads, posters, etc.) will contain visual elements. While this isn’t IB Visual Arts, you should still consider the following things when looking at such texts:

Colour

• What sort of colours are used most/least? Cool colours? Warm colours?

  • Are they bright & vibrant hues? Dull & muted tones? Does this create a certain atmosphere or have certain connotations?

  • If you’re familiar with it, you can talk about colour theory and how it might influence a reader’s interpretation of a text.

Scale, Size & Graphic Weight

• Relative to reality/a realistic portrayal, what is being emphasised/exaggerated & what is being under-proportioned?

• Why might the author choose to exaggerate/under-proportion something?What effect does this have? What message is conveyed?

Perspective & Positioning

• If a certain object is shown, is the viewer looking down at it? Up at it? From the same level?

• What’s in the foreground (front of picture)/background (back of picture)? Is the frame facing down/up/head on? Is anything in focus/out of focus?

• What’s implied about the status of things which are portrayed with different perspectives/positions?

  • If you, the viewer/audience, are looking down upon something below you, how might that establish that thing’s status relative to you versus if you were looking up at something above you?

  • What does it mean if something is in focus/out of focus? What does this say about what the author wishes to draw attention to (or neglect)?

• Is the text trying to draw your eye to certain objects? Is there a ‘direction’ the viewer’s eyes are led in (top to bottom, side to side, winding, zig-zag)

  • What might this suggest about the message being conveyed?

Font

• Does the style of font used invoke a certain emotion or atmosphere? Increase comprehension/legibility?

  • Simpler serif fonts (if you don’t know the distinction between serif & sans-serif, are often used for formality & legibility.

  • Curvier/more ‘extravagant’ fonts, usually sans-serif, are often used for visual effect & aesthetics, to draw the reader’s attention to something.

Gutter

• If you’re looking at a comic strip, what types of transitions between panels are used? How does this impact the amount of closure (imagination) needed for the audience to understand the piece?

• Do transitions speed up the text? Slow it down? Force you to consider one panel over another?

  • Learn more about gutters & transitions in comics.

Interactions with Language

• If you have a multi-modal text (one that combines both language & visual elements), how do the text elements and visual elements enhance each other?

  • Do they work together to create a similar message or are they contrasted to highlight one message over another?

Paper 1 Explained-2024 Revision

Paper 1 (P1) is the first of two externally-marked exam papers you have to write. SL students have to analyze one text from a choice of two possible texts in 1h30m, while HL students have to analyze & compare two texts from two possible pairs of texts in 2h.

Both language (non-fiction texts that explicitly inform, persuade, discuss, or argue some viewpoint, e.g. websites, advertisements, news articles, etc.) and literature (artistic fiction/non-fiction texts that implicitly convey ideas/messages, e.g. poems, short stories, memoirs, etc.) texts will show up on P1s, so you do need to prepare for both.

Time Management

Managing the little time you have is essential to scoring well on a Paper 1—you need to know what to do in the time you have to maximize the quality of the final product you produce. Here’s a general strategy we suggest:

5m Reading Time (Before Time Starts)

• All IB exams have 5 minutes of reading time (no writing allowed) before timing starts—use this time wisely!

• Skim over your options & decide on one ASAP so you can spend more time preparing your response

Prepare Your Response

(20-30m)

• Read your text(s) at least 3 times:

  • Once to get the gist of them

  • Once to annotate in depth; don’t be afraid to mark up your paper (even with colours/highlighters) here

  • Once to look through again to review your annotations scour for anything you’ve missed

• Make a point outline of your paragraphs so you know what you’ll be writing

• HL: Try to find at least three common ideas between your texts (one idea per paragraph) here

Write Your Response

(SL: 40-50m; HL: 1h20-30m)

• Clutch time: start writing!

• Try to keep writing at a consistent pace, but not too quickly to keep your handwriting legible

• Give yourself a few rest breaks (~30s) every 30m or so to rest your hand.

Proofread Your Response

(5-10m)

• No matter how well you write, always spend some time to closely read back (don’t skim) your response & review!

  • Depending on your response length & how accurate you tend to be with spelling/grammar, you may need more or less time for this

• Check & fix errors, inconsistent structuring, and illegible handwriting

Structuring a Response

Whether you’re SL and panicking over analyzing one text or HL and panicking over comparing two, don’t fret—here’s a surefire strategy for structuring any P1 response.

Introductory Paragraph:

• Briefly introduce your text(s)—try to address each of the elements of TAP DANCE in your introduction.

• Clearly state your thesis statement, i.e. the main, overarching argument you’re making in your essay.

  • This should establish the content of your paragraphs and make clear the point you want to make about the similarities and differences of each text.

  • However, this shouldn’t be overly broad nor too narrow either—include relevant information summarizing your analysis and only that.

Body Paragraphs:

• Aim to have three body paragraphs, each focused on a distinct main idea.

  • Main ideas can be be context stylistic/literary devices, rhetorical appeals, or thematic ideas.

  • Trying to write more than three body paragraphs, given the limited time you have, often results in an overly broad & insufficiently detailed analysis—we don’t recommend it.

• Use PETAL to structure your paragraphs and comment on elements of TAP DANCE

  • Don’t write one body paragraph per TAP DANCE element though—they should be embedded throughout your analysis!

• Answer the three LangLit questions over the course of each of your body paragraphs in relation to your text(s).

  • If you’re HL, compare the way your two texts relate to those questions

Conclusion Paragraph:

• Restate your thesis and briefly summarize each of the arguments you make.

  • Don’t introduce any new evidence/points here This is a final summary, not another body paragraph.

How to ACE each Paper 1 marking criteria?

Criterion A Understanding of the Text

What is this?

The degree to which you understand the text’s purpose & use of language to convey it & affect the reader.

How do I do this?

Remember: there’s no ‘correct’ interpretation, only a thoughtful one.

• As long as your interpretation makes sense and is supported by evidence from the text, you’re showing your understanding of the text(s)

  • This will get you high marks in Criterion A & C!

Back up your responses with evidence!

• To demonstrate good understanding of your text(s), you need to support your points with lots of evidence that:

  • Comes from all parts (beginning, middle & end) of your text, not just from a small concentrated section of it

  • Demonstrate a wide variety of formal features (e.g. stylistic/literary devices, rhetorical appeals, etc.) and exemplify their effect on the reader

Criterion B Understanding of the Use & Effects of Stylistic Features

What is this?

How well you identify formal features of your text—stylistic devices, rhetorical devices, etc. and explain how they affect/impact the audience.

How do I do this?

Always discuss the effect on the reader!

• Identifying devices, contextual information, etc. is only going to get you so far—the part people often forget to address is the impact of what you’ve identified has on a specified audience.

Pick & choose your battles.

• Texts will often have tons of features you could hypothetically talk about, some more significant than others.

• Don’t waste time talking about every single minute detail there is—find a variety of good devices in your text(s) that have significant effects on the reader and consistently analyze their effect on an audience in great depth.

(HL) Look for overlaps & differences in theme/message and language.

• Your texts will likely either:

  • Use language differently to achieve similar purposes or convey similar ideas

  • Use language similarly but to convey different ideas

• These differences may come from differences in your texts’ contexts.

• Also, the HL rubric specifically states that your analysis has to be comparative (it must focus on the similarities/differences between the two texts)—don’t just discuss them on their own!

Criterion C Organisation & Development

What is this?

The flow and structure of your essay as a whole.

How do I do this?

Organize your response clearly!

• Using the PETAL paragraph structure and the outline we gave above helps a lot here—as we said before, all your body paragraphs should have all the elements of PETAL.

  • Pay special attention to the L (Link) of your paragraph—this tends to be what people forget frequently!

  • Every single paragraph needs to end by tying back the specific argument/point made in it back to the overall argument of your paper.

(HL) Divide your discussion equally between your texts.

• Don’t spend 90% of your response talking about Text A and only 10% of your response glossing over Text B!

• The HL rubric says that a response that does well in this category should be “comparative and well balanced”, so make one that is!

Criterion D Language

What is this?

How consistently strong your own English writing is throughout your response.

How do I do this?

Write formally & with a wide vocabulary, but don’t throw a thesaurus at your response!

• You should, of course, use a formal, academic style of writing with correct grammar/spelling throughout your entire response.

• However, scoring well on P1 is not about big words! Keep your writing consistent before making it complex.

  • If you use fancy words, make sure you understand them & use them correctly—no one likes a showoff, especially not your IB examiners!

  • If you want to expand your vocabulary, try learning some action verbs you can use to describe specific effects, intents, etc. well

  • In writing your response, you should use an academic, formal register throughout and maintain correct grammar.

IB English Paper 1Sample Responses

IB Eng Paper 1 Past Paper: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/05/diet-detox-art-healthy-eating

Paper 1 Sample Response

No diet, no detox: how to relearn the art of eating Bee Wilson’s contemporary article in The Guardian aims to persuade the reader to rethink their approach to food and eating through the formulation and development of an argument that suggests that eating for good health is a form of learned behaviour. The basis for good eating is a psychological attitude that can be learned or, where people have fallen into poor eating habits, relearned. Wilson argues that there is nothing that is inevitable about our eating habits, particularly the adoption of unhealthy habits, and this is evidenced by those people who already eat in a way that supports their health and wellbeing.

The article, published in early January, is part of a cultural trope in ‘Western’ societies in which people often try to make a change or improvement to their lives in the new year. Often this change involves improving health and fitness, and can involve weight loss. Wilson’s article is similar to other work in this genre in suggesting that readers have a choice in changing their attitudes and behaviour. In fact, this forms part of the article’s central thesis: People do have a choice, and there is nothing inevitable about what we eat and the ways we eat it. This is clearly fundamental to the function of persuasion; without real choice or a sense of having choice, readers cannot really be persuaded to change their approach to eating. Of course, Guardian readers are likely to be relatively wealthy and middle class. To the extent this is the case, they probably have the financial means to choose what they eat. The article is, however, atypical of its genre in that it does not suggest a ‘quick fix’, as is made clear in the headline which promises the reader “no diet, no detox”. Separated by a colon, the headline offers the reader the alternative of “relearn(ing) the art of eating”. Framed as a “how to” guide, the headline, establishing the notion of eating as an “art”, has an esoteric connotation that may appeal to readers of The Guardian. The headline, in fact, represents the article’s overall persuasive argument that good eating is less about what people do and more about the ways they think about food and the attitudes they establish over time.

After the headline and byline, the multimodal article opens with an attractive image of various fruits and vegetables on silver forks. The food is depicted in a variety of vibrant, saturated colours that are in raw, uncooked form. In addition, front lighting causes the fruit, vegetables and forks to shine. Presented as ‘bite-size’ morsels, the foods are likely to appeal to the reader, and there is a clear suggestion that these foods represent nutrition and can contribute to good health. Arguably, the foods in the image are a metonym for ‘healthy eating’, and while the inclusion of foods such as broccoli seem cliched, the close shot image suggests that the forks are being lifted towards the mouths of readers, persuading them to ‘relearn eating’ by trying the food being offered.

Early in the article, Wilson establishes a sense of what “out relationship with food has become”. Using a negatively connoted lexical cluster of words drawn from the argot of psychology, she suggests that people’s connection to food is “disordered… obsessive… a struggle” and a source of “anxieties”. The hyperbolic metaphor, “diet madness” reiterates Wilson’s argument around our present-day dysfunctional attitudes to food. Such a negative portrayal of modern eating is unlikely to persuade readers on its own. Notably, she writes that “our relationship with food has become disordered and obsessive”, and this present perfect construction implies that things were not always like this and can, presumably, change and improve in the future. In the next sentence, she confirms this when she writes that “it needn’t be such a struggle to learn good eating habits”. This is likely to persuade the reader of her argument and to continue reading. It is, after all, appealing to read that problems can be quickly fixed without too much of a struggle. In the following paragraph, Wilson reiterates her thesis. Rejecting the idea that there is one panacea or other ‘quick fixes’ to harmful eating habits, she argues that “how we eat – how we approach food – is what really matters”, and that this is “a question of psychology as much as nutrition”.

Developing her ‘psychological’ argument, Wilson claims that part of the problematic relationship people have to food derives from the sense that our eating habits are an unalterable aspect of our identity. She writes that, “our tastes follow us around like a comforting shadow… as if our core attitudes to eating are set in stone.” Both the simile and idiom function rhetorically to confirm that such beliefs are simply wrong, a point she emphatically makes in the final sentence of this paragraph where she claims that “nothing could be further from the truth”. To persuade readers further, Wilson restates her point in a short, one-sentence paragraph that draws attention to itself. She writes that “all foods that you regularly eat are ones that you learned to eat. Everyone starts life drinking milk. After that, it’s all up for grabs”. The concluding idiom remakes Wilson’s central claim that eating habits are not fixed but learned, and that, beyond early infancy, people have a choice in what they eat. The following paragraphs extend Wilson’s persuasive argument. Again, her main rhetorical strategy is contrast. She describes “today’s food culture” as “homogenous (and) monotonous… (providing the) illusion of infinite choice”. These “industrial concoctions”, processed, and high in sugar and salt represent a “danger”. Such harmful foods are contrasted with “the more varied flavours of traditional cuisines”. Readers are permitted to determine themselves what exactly “traditional cuisines” are, but the initial image that introduces the article provide an important clue. Wilson’s assertion is extended by the inclusion of accessed voices, refencing a 2010 study, and providing a sense of ethos to her claim that poor eating habits and associated develop from childhood through a “self-perpetuating cycle”. While Wilson’s ‘behaviourist’ claims develop from logical argumentation, this logos is reinforced by pathos; for Guardian readers who are also parents, they may be further persuaded by suggestions that modern eating habits may harm their children.

In the final paragraph of the article, Wilson lampoons the ways we socialize children to eat, describing as “weird” and “arcane” the way that parents often go to great lengths to disguise healthy foods prepared for children. Using a lexical cluster of words such as “hide”, “conceal”, and “smuggle” she suggests that there is something dishonest in these practices. Here, Wilson returns to her initial argument in which she claims that our modern approach to food has become dysfunctional and flawed. Throughout the article, Wilson uses various forms of synthetic personalization, including the repetition of personal pronouns such as “you” and “our” which intend to ‘close the gap’ between the text and the reader, persuading them, by asking the actual reader to adopt the perspective of a compliant, ideal reader. This is particularly apparent in the final paragraph where readers may recognise themselves or can empathise with the person who will go to great lengths to disguise broccoli in children’s food.

Wilson’s article aims to persuade readers through a structure of contrast, arguing that current contemporary attitudes to food verge on madness. This, however, is not inevitable or irreversible, and that without fixating on particular diets or foodstuffs, we can alter our eating habits through altering our habits of mind. In making this argument and in trying to persuade the reader of it, she writes, in the language of psychology, with great authority and some originality; change your mind about food and everything else will follow, she seems to suggest. Readers, of course, may not be persuaded. In part this is because Wilson does not clearly specify what healthy eating is or how we should source and cook food, and she does not tell readers how exactly they should change their mind. Other readers may prefer to enjoy January as much as possible without reading articles that imply they are at least inadequate, if not slightly insane.