Unseen Text: The Elephant Sanctuary Spring Appeal Text Type: Charity Appeal – Advert Guiding Question: How and to what effect do text and image work together in this appeal? As a subcategory of advertising, charity appeals employ a similar range of methods to persuade the reader to donate […]
Unseen Text: Prospero’s Cell by Lawrence Durrell Literary Genre: Prose Non-Fiction / Travel Writing Guiding Question: How does the author use descriptive language to create atmosphere? This title of this passage, Prospero’s Cell by Lawrence Durrell, alludes to the antagonist of Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Prospero, a sorcerer whose pursuit of knowledge […]
Unseen Text: Thunderstorms: a preparedness guide Text Type: Infographic Guiding Question: Explain the methods used to present different types of information in this text. Infographics are an oft-encountered text type in Paper 1. They tend to produce a ‘love-hate’ response with my students. Some like the simple features […]
Unseen Text: If you want to follow your dreams, you have to say no to all the alternatives Text Type: Blog Post Guiding Question: How do authorial choices help to create a persuasive message? Blogs are a really great text type to practice with. Most blogs are multimodal, […]
I was given this leaflet by a colleague many years ago, and I’ve always found it to be a great practice text. True, it’s unlikely that the texts selected for Paper 1 nowadays would be as dense as this leaflet. But that’s what makes it a good text for training. It’s impossible to cover all the points and methods used by the writers in a single sitting, so you have to make clear choices about what you are going to focus on analysing and the evidence you will include in your response.
Last week would have been the 95th birthday of Reverend Martin Luthor King Jr which, this year, happily coincided with Martin Luthor King Day, always marked on the third Monday of January. As part of our course on rhetoric and persuasion, students worked with King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to improve their skills of analysis and hear those rhetorical techniques put into action by a master of his craft. Some 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, a young church pastor climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to describe his vision of America. More than 200,000 people – black and white – came to listen. While it’s highly unlikely you’ll get such a well-known and instantly recognisable speech as a text in Paper 1, that doesn’t stop you practicing with familiar words and phrases. So this is what we did…
Unseen Text: Chevrolet Volt Text Type: Print Advert Guiding Question: How do elements of this advert combine to create a persuasive appeal for the viewer? Paper 1 will consist of two texts: if you are a standard level candidate, you can choose which text you would like to […]
This particular text and guiding question was set by the IB as a specimen paper when the Lang and Lit curriculum was revised in 2019, so it’s a good one to have a go at. It continues a long tradition of presenting advertisement texts for analysis in Paper 1. Ads are great multi-modal texts with strong visuals as well as plenty of persuasive copy and tricky linguistic devices for you to unpick…
Unseen Text: Gryphon by Charles Baxter Literary Genre: Prose Fiction Guiding Question: Comment on the interactions between the teacher and the children, and what these interactions imply about life and learning. The purpose of Language A: Literature Paper 1 is for you to write a Guided Literary Analysis […]
Unseen Text: The Bat by Ruth Pitter Literary Genre: Poetry Guiding Question: Comment on the development of the speaker’s attitude towards the bat. You might recognise Ruth Pitter from your IGCSE studies; she wrote the poem Stormcock in Elder, about how an encounter with a little bird taught […]
IB Language and Literature 2.0 