Category: Paper 1 Analysis

What’s Wrong With McDonalds?

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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.

A Call for Unity

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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…

An American Revolution

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Unseen Text: Chevrolet Volt Text Type: Print Advert Guiding Question: How do visual elements such as font, layout and image impact the reader of this advert? Paper 1 will consist of two texts: if you are a standard level candidate, you can choose which text you would like […]

Uniqlo Selfless Selfie

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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…

Magical Thinking

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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 […]

Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder

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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 […]

Children Playing

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Unseen Text: Children Playing Text Type: Satirical Cartoon Guiding Question: Analyse the methods used by the writer of this text to convey a message. According to the IB Subject Guide for Language and Literature, of the two texts presented to you in your Paper 1 examination, one will […]

You Have a Question, Calvin?

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Unseen Text: Calvin and Hobbes Text Type: Comic Strip Guiding Question: How do both text and image create humour in this comic strip? Comic strips are a popular text type to read and study and may also appear on Paper 1. By this stage in your education, it […]

Those Cats are Good

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Today’s sample response was written by a student, Helena Wang, under exam conditions. While it has been edited for clarity, the ideas and analysis points are hers. This answer contains many strengths; I’d like to draw your attention to the focus on tone of voice. Tone can be one of the hardest elements of a written text to interpret…

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…