IB Diploma Programme Language A: Language and Literature: Subject Overview

IB Diploma Programme Language A: Language and Literature studies the complex and dynamic nature of language, exploring both its practical and aesthetic dimensions – treating a political speech or a piece of advertising copy as worthy of the same rigorous analysis traditionally reserved for poetry or the novel. The course examines the crucial role language plays in communication, reflecting experience and shaping the world, and the role of individuals as producers of language – a student in this course is treated not just as an analyst of texts made by others, but as a producer of language themselves. Students explore how language choices, text types, literary forms and contextual elements all affect meaning, building an analytical vocabulary that applies as readily to a newspaper opinion piece as to a novel or a play.

Areas of exploration and teaching hours

Area of exploration	SL hours	HL hours
Readers, writers and texts	50	80
Time and space	50	80
Intertextuality: connecting texts	50	80
Total	150	240

Each area gains exactly 30 hours at HL over SL, reflecting greater depth of study across all three rather than an extra fourth component. The guide treats this hour split as a recommendation rather than a binding rule – a footnote to the table states the hours should not be taken as prescriptive or restrictive, since the areas will often overlap in the study of a text, and the IB’s own course page heads the equivalent column “recommended” hours.

Central concepts and the learner portfolio

Seven concepts – identity, culture, creativity, communication, perspective, transformation and representation – structure the teaching and learning of the course (identical to the concepts used in Language A: Literature) and recur across all three areas of exploration. They are not directly assessed in any component, but the guide treats them as an essential part of a student’s investigation of every text and work studied.

The learner portfolio is a mandatory, central element of the course for every student: an individual collection of work built up over the two years, used to prepare for every assessment component. It is not itself assessed or moderated by the IB, but schools may be required to submit it to help establish the authenticity of a student’s work, so “not assessed” should not be read as “never seen” or “irrelevant.”

Works studied

SL students must study a minimum of 4 literary works (at least 1 originally written in the language studied, at least 1 in translation, and 2 freely chosen) and HL students a minimum of 6 literary works (at least 2 originally written in the language studied, at least 2 in translation, and 2 freely chosen). This literary-works count is only half the picture: each area of exploration must also involve the study of non-literary texts equivalent in teaching and learning time to the literary works studied within it, so the course’s actual reading and viewing load is considerably larger than the literary-works figure alone suggests.

Aims

The course aims to enable students to:

• engage with a range of texts, in a variety of media and forms, from different periods, styles and cultures
• develop skills in listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing, presenting and performing
• develop skills in interpretation, analysis and evaluation
• develop sensitivity to the formal and aesthetic qualities of texts
• develop an understanding of relationships between texts and a variety of perspectives, cultural contexts, and local and global issues
• communicate and collaborate in a confident and creative way
• foster a lifelong interest in and enjoyment of language and literature, extending well beyond the specific texts studied for assessment.

How it’s assessed

Language A: Language and Literature is assessed through two written papers, an individual oral, and – at Higher Level only – an additional piece of written coursework. Paper 1 sets two unseen non-literary texts at both levels, but SL students write a guided analysis of only one of the two (1 hour 15 minutes, 20 marks), while HL students write a guided analysis of both (2 hours 15 minutes, 40 marks). At SL, Paper 1 is worth 35%, Paper 2 (a comparative essay on studied literary texts) is worth 35%, and the individual oral is worth 30% – three near-equally weighted components, none of which dominates the final grade at SL. At HL, Paper 1 remains worth 35%, Paper 2 drops to 25%, the individual oral drops to 20%, and an HL essay – a piece of independent written coursework of 1,200 to 1,500 words on a literary text or work, or a non-literary text or body of work, studied in class – is worth the remaining 20%.

HL assessment therefore differs from SL in three linked ways, not one: a longer, higher-mark Paper 1; lower weightings for Paper 2 and the oral; and the addition of the HL essay. Paper 2 itself is the same length and format at both levels.

The individual oral, common to both levels, is a single prepared spoken response in which students examine how a global issue of their choosing is presented through the content and form of one studied literary work and one studied non-literary body of work, supported by an extract from each. This requires exactly the cross-category comparison the course’s whole approach is built around — connecting a literary work and a non-literary body of work through the same analytical lens, rather than treating the two as belonging to entirely separate categories of study.

The three areas of exploration, and how they connect

“Readers, writers and texts” establishes core interpretive skills across a wide range of text types, both literary and non-literary. “Time and space” examines how texts are shaped by, and shape, the cultural and historical context they were produced in. “Intertextuality: connecting texts” builds comparative skills across multiple texts, connected by theme, form or context. Paper 1’s guided textual analysis draws most directly on “Readers, writers and texts,” while Paper 2’s comparative essay on studied literary texts draws most directly on “Intertextuality,” making the three areas a genuine progression toward the two written papers rather than three unrelated units taught side by side.

Language A versus Language B

Language A: Language and Literature is one of two Studies in Language and Literature courses a DP student can take as their first-language subject, alongside Language A: Literature (a more purely literary course without this course’s equal emphasis on non-literary text types). Confirm with a school’s DP coordinator which specific Language A course a student is enrolled in, since the two courses share some conceptual ground but differ meaningfully in text selection and assessment weighting.

Why non-literary texts are central, not supplementary

Unlike a traditional literature course, Language A: Language and Literature treats non-literary texts — advertisements, speeches, articles, social media posts — as objects of serious critical analysis in their own right, not merely as a lighter supplement to literary study. Paper 1’s guided textual analysis in particular is built around this principle: the paper sets two previously unseen non-literary texts from different text types (SL candidates analyse one of them, HL candidates both), and candidates apply close reading skills developed across the whole course, reflecting the course’s core claim that language shapes meaning regardless of whether a text calls itself “literature.” (Paper 1’s texts are non-literary at both levels; it is Language A: Literature’s Paper 1 that is exclusively literary.)

Source

International Baccalaureate Organization, Language A: Language and Literature subject brief (Diploma Programme), 2019.