IB DP Language A: Literature – The Individual Oral and Global Issues Study Guide

This study guide covers the individual oral in IB Diploma Programme Language A: Literature: choosing a global issue, pairing an extract from a work studied in translation with one from a work originally written in the language studied, and structuring what you say. It draws on two areas of exploration, Readers, writers and texts and Intertextuality: connecting texts, and applies at both SL and HL. It follows the current IB subject brief (first assessments for SL and HL 2021).

When you have worked through it, test yourself with the revision notes and the practice questions. Course links: Literature course hub · printable checklist.

What this unit covers

Area of the course	What you must be able to do	SL/HL
Readers, writers and texts	Analyse how specific choices of language, form and structure in each extract create meaning	Both
Intertextuality: connecting texts	Compare how two works from different languages and cultures approach the same concern	Both
Individual oral (internal assessment)	Give a prepared oral response on how one work originally written in the language studied and one work studied in translation approach a common global issue	Both (30% of the final grade at SL, 20% at HL)

The assessment revision notes and the exam preparation guide place the oral within the whole assessment and cover balancing your time between the two works. This page concentrates on three things they do not work through: narrowing an issue, choosing extracts, and analysing a text you have read in translation.

What the subject brief says

The subject brief describes the individual oral as a prepared oral response on the way that one work originally written in the language studied and one work studied in translation have approached a common global issue. It is internally assessed and carries 30% of the final grade at SL and 20% at HL.

Read each part of that sentence as an instruction:

• Prepared – you plan it in advance and choose your own material.
• One work in the language studied, one in translation – the pairing is fixed. Two works from the same language do not meet the requirement.
• Approached – your subject is the way each work handles the issue: its voice, imagery, structure and form. It is not a talk about the issue in the real world.
• Common global issue – one issue that both works genuinely share.

The brief’s aims include understanding relationships between texts and “local and global issues”. Its assessment objectives include analysing the ways texts “offer perspectives on human concerns”.

The brief does not give the timing, the length of extract, the rules on notes or the assessment criteria. Your teacher will share these. Plan with the official rules in front of you.

Choosing a global issue

Theme or issue?

A theme is a subject a work is about: power, family, home. A global issue is a tension or problem within that subject that matters to many people across many places, and that you can also see in local, everyday life. A theme lets you describe. An issue gives you something to argue.

Test any issue before you commit to it:

1. Does it affect large numbers of people, not one character?
2. Does it cross national and cultural borders?
3. Could you point to it in ordinary local life?
4. Do both works engage with it through specific choices you can quote?

The fourth test matters most. A strong issue that only one work supports is no use to you.

Worked example: narrowing

Step	Wording	Problem or strength
Theme	“Power”	Too broad to argue
Issue	“Censorship”	Better, but only names a practice
Angle	“How people living under censorship keep speaking when open speech is forbidden”	Arguable, and gives you a question to put to each work

The final wording works because it names an action (keep speaking) that you can trace in the language of each extract. Both works can now be asked the same question: how do their characters keep speaking?

Why the pairing helps

Because one work comes from another language and culture, the issue has to hold across a real distance. Two works from different places may treat the same issue with very different assumptions. Your oral is strongest when it explains that difference.

For illustration only, if you study the course in English: Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879, translated from Norwegian) and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) could both be read against the issue of a woman’s freedom within marriage. Your teacher decides which works your class studies.

Choosing the extracts

You will usually anchor the oral in a passage from each work (your teacher will confirm the rules). A strong extract:

• shows the issue clearly in a passage short enough to analyse closely;
• is dense with choices you can name (imagery, voice, form, structure, sound, dialogue);
• connects to moments elsewhere in the work, so you can move from part to whole;
• gives you a contrast in method with the other extract.

The worked pair

Extract 1: from a work originally written in English (Original text written for Marlbridge, from an imagined poetry collection):

The Notice

They pinned it to the chapel door at noon:
no meetings after dark, no songs, no crowds.
By evening we had learned to hum the tune
with shut mouths, like the wind behind the clouds.
The mayor read it twice and called it care.
My father folded it into his coat,
and every night he took it out, as prayer,
and read aloud the words the censor wrote.

Extract 2: from a work studied in translation (Original text written for Marlbridge, presented as a passage from an imagined novel read in English translation):

Since the new law, Teodor had sold more notebooks than ever. People bought them in pairs: one to show, one to keep. The first they filled with prices, weather and the names of saints. The second they wrapped in oilcloth and pushed under floorboards. “Paper keeps what the mouth cannot,” his grandmother used to say, and he found himself saying it to customers who had not asked. He never read what they wrote. He only noticed that the pencils wore down faster in winter, when the evenings were long and the streets were empty.

The pair contrasts a poem spoken by a community (“we”) with a novel seen through one outsider.

Analysing each extract

The poem

• The list of bans. “no meetings after dark, no songs, no crowds” repeats “no” three times. The rhythm is flat and official, like the notice itself.
• Resistance through sound. The community learns “to hum the tune / with shut mouths”. The enjambment carries the tune across the line break, just as the song survives the ban.
• Power disguised as kindness. The mayor “called it care”. The word shows how the authorities describe control as protection.
• The final twist. The father reads “aloud the words the censor wrote”. The only speech still allowed becomes a nightly ritual, “as prayer”, and so a quiet act of protest.
• Form. Regular rhyme (noon/tune, care/prayer) holds the poem in order, like the rules it describes, while the content slips out of that order.

The novel extract

• Doubling. “one to show, one to keep” divides life into public and private. The balanced phrase makes the double life sound routine.
• What is permitted. The public notebooks hold “prices, weather and the names of saints”: harmless, repeated content.
• Hiding. The second notebooks are “wrapped in oilcloth and pushed under floorboards”. Speech is treated like something that must be protected from damp and discovery.
• The outsider’s view. Teodor “never read what they wrote”. The narrative never shows the forbidden words. We see resistance only through its traces: pencils that “wore down faster”.
• The proverb. “Paper keeps what the mouth cannot” states the extract’s idea in folk wisdom, passed down by a grandmother. It links resistance to memory and generations.

Working with a text in translation

You are analysing the words of the translation. Be precise about what you can claim:

• Say “in this translation” when a point depends on a single word, a sound effect or the rhythm of a phrase. The proverb’s balance, for example, may belong to the translator.
• Imagery, structure, narrative perspective, symbols and events usually carry across languages more reliably than puns, rhyme or alliteration. Build your main points on these.
• Do not claim what the author “chose” at the level of a single word unless you know the original wording.
• Use what you have learned about the culture and time the work came from, but only where it explains a choice in the text.
• Never treat the translated work as the weaker partner. It needs the same depth of analysis.

Worked analytical paragraph

Both works show that censorship does not end speech; it drives speech into disguise. In the poem, the community hums “with shut mouths”, so the song survives inside the silence the notice demands. In the novel, the disguise is written rather than sung: people buy notebooks “one to show, one to keep”, filling the first with safe content and hiding the second. Yet the two works place the reader differently. The poem’s “we” makes us part of the resistance, while the novel keeps us outside with Teodor, who “never read what they wrote”. The poem celebrates defiance from within; the novel suggests that under censorship even sympathetic neighbours can only guess what others think.

The pattern: a claim, evidence from each work, the effect of each choice, and a contrast.

Moving from extract to whole work

After each extract, make one or two precise links to the rest of the work: a named later scene where the same image or idea returns. One named moment beats a general claim that a pattern “happens throughout”.

Structuring the oral

Two common structures work. Check your teacher’s guidance before choosing.

Work by work:

1. Introduction: the issue as an angle, both works, a one-sentence thesis.
2. Extract from the first work: two or three analytical points.
3. Links to the whole first work.
4. Extract from the second work: two or three analytical points.
5. Links to the whole second work.
6. Comparison and conclusion.

Point by point: each section takes one aspect of the issue and moves between both works within it. Comparison runs throughout, but you need careful signposting.

Model opening

“My global issue is how people living under censorship keep speaking when open speech is forbidden. I will look at a poem from a collection written in English and an extract from a novel I have read in translation. I will argue that both works show speech surviving in disguise, but the poem presents that survival as shared defiance, while the novel presents it as something private and hidden even from neighbours.”

Signposting

A listener cannot see your headings. Use phrases such as “My first point about the poem…”, “Beyond this extract, the novel…”, “Where the poem speaks as a community, the novel…”.

Common errors

• A theme, not an issue. “Power in both works” gives you nothing to prove.
• Talking about the real world. Facts about censorship in history earn credit only if they explain a choice in the text.
• Claiming single-word choices in a translation as the author’s own without knowing the original.
• Analysing sound in the translated work only. Rhyme and alliteration may be the translator’s. Build on imagery and structure.
• Labels without effects. “There is enjambment” is not analysis. Say what it does.
• No move beyond the extracts. The oral concerns two works, not two passages.
• A forced match. If the works disagree about the issue, say so and explain why.

Where to go next

• Condensed recall: revision notes
• Original questions with worked answers: practice set
• Close reading: Readers, writers and texts
• Comparison: Intertextuality: connecting texts
• The whole course: syllabus guide and subject guide

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief, Language A: literature, first assessments for SL and HL 2021 (2019).