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Prose Study: The Vegetarian by Han Kang

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Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is one of the most internationally well-known Korean novels. It is not a story about a vegetarian per se; rather, it is a work that investigates what constitutes suffering. It tells the story of Yeong-hye as related through the eyes of three members of her family: her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister In-hye. The story begins when Yeong-hye, seemingly from out of the blue, tells her husband she will no longer eat meat and proceeds to throw all the meat in their house away.

Prose Study: The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

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In these stories, a man sees his favourite elephant vanish overnight; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald’s; and a young woman discovers a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard and can read her thoughts. You never know what is going to happen in one of Murakami’s stories – or even which reality you’re going to find yourself lost inside.

Drama Study: Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet

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Glengarry Glen Ross is a Pulitzer prize-winning play by David Mamet. It tells the story of a group of salesmen working for a dubious real-estate firm. Head office has a shock in store for the men: a new sales competition is being launched. The top prize is a new Cadillac car. But, in a week’s time, anyone who’s not performing will be fired.

Stereotyping Poverty

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Find out about poverty myths, learn the social, political and economic reasons that trap people in poverty, and discover both texts that perpetuate false poverty stories, and progressive texts that call for a change in the social narrative about this modern taboo.

Those Cats are Good

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Tone can be one of the hardest elements of a written text to interpret: a spoken interview would include inflection, pace, emphasis, even body language and eye contact, all clues that can help you hear the speaker’s tone. But in your exam you’ll be given a printed text, so you’ll have to use your mind’s ear and inference skills to ascertain a speaker’s tone of voice, should this be relevant to the extract. Read through the text for yourself, and keep track of how you respond to tone. What words will you use: Confident? Nonchalant? Humble? Arrogant? Zealous? Kind? All these words – and more – could be useful in a response to this text. While the interpretation and evaluation below is entirely convincing, remember that there is more than one way to skin a cat. This is especially true when the text is as rich and linguistically interesting as this interview.

Politically Correct Language

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One of the most difficult – but often the most crucial – elements of a text to analyse and understand is tone of voice. When listening to a speaker speak, tone can be conveyed in a variety of ways; voice inflection, emphasis, pace, volume, body language and more. When reading words on a page, you can’t hear the writer’s tone of voice. Nevertheless, tone is integral to meaning, so you need to be able to make good inferences. Practicing by reading opinion columns is a good way to attune your ear to the subtleties of tone. Opinion columns can be challenging or conciliatory, strident or nuanced, forceful or subtle, assertive or balanced. Sometimes a writer might use sarcasm or irony to make a point – misunderstand this and you will misunderstand the entire meaning of a text. Take a look at this article, about the contentious topic of political correctness, and identify areas where you believe the writer’s tone is particularly clear.

Fern Foray

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Travel writing is a rich and varied category of writing with fluid genre boundaries. Extracts could range from an informative guidebook entry, to an online review advising people whether or not to take a particular trip, to a descriptive passage helping you visualise a faraway place, or an advert persuading you to sign up to a tour… and these are just a few of the possibilities that spring to mind. The extract below is a piece of travel writing in the form of a journal or diary. One of the challenges of being given such a rich passage is deciding what to write about – remember, after you plan you’ll only have an hour or so to write your analysis. Before you read the sample response, first work with the text and guiding question. Plan a series of points that you would want to develop into your own answer. Then read the response that follows. Which points would you also have written about?

Disappearing Bees

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In recent years, the category of general interest scientific writing has exploded in both quality and quantity. Fuelled by charismatic scientists – who also happen to be great speakers and writers – such as Michio Kaku, Brian Cox and Sabine Hossenfelder, and crossing media from books to television documentaries to podcasts, blogs, vlogs and video lectures, this genre actually has a long and distinguished history (think about how many years David Attenborough and Jane Goodall have been writing and presenting, and how many people have read Charles Darwin or Stephen Hawkings’ famous books). A short search on the internet turns up several possible sources of articles such as today’s: New Scientist Magazine; Nature; Cosmos; National Geographic; Scientific American – and many more. Not surprisingly, these publications have been the source of many texts in Paper 1. While they may be initially befuddling, after you read a few articles patterns start to emerge. Today’s response was written by Meagan Finocchiaro after exploring this genre as part of her Paper 1 preparation. She began to notice a pattern: many articles were built around a narrative framework, with elements such as setting the scene, flashback, dramatic tension – and even character types such as protagonists and antagonists.

Telling the Time

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This text was provided by the IB as an example of what kind of writing to expect in Paper 1, so it’s worth paying attention to. In the past, there have been several examples of something you might call ‘general interest scientific writing,’ whether the journey of a water molecule through the universe, an investigation into declining bee populations, or an article about robotics and artificial intelligence. You shouldn’t be worried about needing any specialist knowledge to understand these texts – remember, Paper 1 is primarily a language analysis exercise. As such, you should be more concerned with the formal and stylistic features of the text than having to understand esoteric concepts. After you’ve practiced once or twice with texts like this, you’ll also realise that this kind of scientific writing is carefully balanced. Of course, it has an inherent appeal to people interested in and knowledgable about science. But casual readers can follow these texts too: the authors often explain ideas clearly, use comparisons to help you visualise, and employ technical language carefully.