IB Diploma Programme Language A: Literature – Paper 1: Guided Literary Analysis Study Guide

This study guide teaches the method for Paper 1: guided literary analysis in IB Diploma Programme Language A: Literature, at SL and HL. It follows the current IB subject brief (first assessments for SL and HL 2021). It draws on two areas of exploration, Readers, writers and texts and Time and space, and teaches you to annotate an unseen poem or prose passage, then plan, structure and time an analysis of its form and style.

Use it with the Paper 1 revision notes and the Paper 1 practice questions. Course links: Literature hub · printable checklist. For the whole course, see the syllabus guide, the subject guide, the assessment revision notes and the exam preparation guide.

What this unit covers

From the subject brief	What you must be able to do	SL/HL
Paper 1: guided analysis of an unseen literary passage or passages “from different text types”	Analyse a poem, prose extract or drama extract you have never seen	SL and HL
Time: 1.25 hours at SL, 2.25 hours at HL	Annotate, plan, write and check inside the time	Different lengths
Weighting: 35% of the final grade	–	Same at SL and HL
Objective: know “elements of literary, stylistic, rhetorical, visual and/or performance craft”	Name features of form and style accurately	SL and HL
Objective: know “features of particular text types and literary forms”	Use the conventions of poetry, prose and drama as evidence	SL and HL
Objective: analyse “ways in which the use of language creates meaning”	Explain effects, not just label devices	SL and HL
Objective: communicate “ideas in clear, logical and persuasive ways”	Write a structured, argued analysis	SL and HL

The brief says “passage/passages”. Your teacher will tell you how many you write about at your level and show you specimen material. On this page, each passage comes with a guiding question pointing to one aspect of the text. Your teacher will share the assessment criteria; this page does not quote them.

How Paper 1 uses the two areas of exploration

• Readers, writers and texts: how a writer’s choices of form and style shape what you, the reader, notice and feel. See the Readers, writers and texts study guide.
• Time and space: the world inside the passage (setting, period, social detail). On an unseen passage you work from what the text shows you. Never invent a biography for the writer.

Step 1: read the guiding question first

Read the guiding question before the passage. Underline its key words: the aspect it names (a character, a mood, a change) and the verb (“present”, “explore”, “convey”). Your first reading is then already aimed. Your thesis must answer the question, and every paragraph must return to it.

Step 2: annotate in three readings

Reading	Your job	What you write
1. Literal	What happens? Who speaks? Where and when?	Two or three lines of plain summary at the top
2. Form and style	Find features that answer the guiding question	Underlining, arrows, margin notes on effect
3. Argument	Decide what the features add up to	One sentence: your thesis

On the second reading, check four layers. The questions differ by form.

Layer	Prose	Poetry	Drama
Voice	Who narrates? First or third person? Whose thoughts do we hear?	Who is the speaker? Who is addressed?	Who speaks most, and who stays silent?
Structure	Paragraph length, where the passage turns, how it ends	Stanzas, line breaks, the turn or shift	Entrances, pauses, how the scene ends
Language	Diction, imagery, simile and metaphor, sentence length	Imagery, sound (alliteration, assonance), rhyme and metre	What is said, what is avoided (subtext)
Context in the text	Setting, period detail, social world	Occasion, place, time of day or year	Stage directions: set, props, movement

Annotate for effect: “short sentence” is a label; “short sentence: hope ends in three words” starts a paragraph.

Worked example 1: prose fiction

Original text written for Marlbridge – prose fiction extract

The last bus had gone at ten past eleven, and Mara had watched it go. She had been standing under the shelter the whole time, her hand half raised, as if the driver might read her mind through the rain. He had not. Now the street was hers: the shut bakery, the chemist’s green cross blinking on and off, the puddle at the kerb that held the whole sky and kept shaking it.

She could ring her father. He would come. He would come in his dressing gown with his good coat over it, and he would say nothing for the first mile, and that nothing would be worse than anything he could say.

The green cross blinked. On. Off. On.

Three miles was not far. People walked three miles all the time; people in films walked across whole countries. She pulled her hood up, and her phone stayed in her pocket, warm and heavy as a stone she had decided not to throw.

Guiding question: How does the writer present Mara’s decision?

Reading 1: literal notes

Mara misses the last bus, thinks of ringing her father, and walks home instead. Third person, but we hear her thoughts.

Reading 2: form and style notes

• “her hand half raised” shows hesitation; “He had not.” ends the hope in three words.
• The puddle “held the whole sky and kept shaking it”: an unsteady reflection of an unsteady mind.
• “He would come. He would come” repeats a certainty that the dressing-gown detail and the paradox of a silence “worse than anything he could say” turn into dread.
• “The green cross blinked. On. Off. On.” Fragments slow time into the see-saw of her choice, and the rhythm stops on “On”.
• “Three miles was not far” is free indirect style: her own voice persuading herself. The jump to “whole countries” is exaggeration that shows doubt.
• The phone is “a stone she had decided not to throw”: not calling becomes restraint, even pride.

Reading 3: thesis

The writer presents Mara’s decision as a slow argument with herself, in which the fear of her father’s silence outweighs the fear of the dark road, so that walking home becomes an act of pride as much as of courage.

Plan

Plan by idea, not by device and not line by line.

Thesis: an argument with herself; pride outweighs fear.
P1  Hesitation: "hand half raised", "He had not.", the shaking
    puddle -> an unsteady, lonely setting.
P2  The case against calling: repeated "He would come", the
    silence "worse than anything he could say".
P3  The choice: "On. Off. On." rhythm; free indirect
    self-persuasion; "a stone she had decided not to throw".

Model introduction

In this extract Mara misses the last bus home and must choose between ringing her father and walking three miles alone at night. The third-person narration stays close to Mara’s thoughts, so the reader watches the decision form rather than being told it. The writer presents that decision as a slow argument with herself, in which the fear of her father’s silence outweighs the fear of the dark road.

Model body paragraph

The case against calling her father is made through what he would not say. The repeated sentence “He would come” first sounds reassuring, but the writer then adds the dressing gown under “his good coat”, a detail that shows how much trouble the rescue would cause him. The paragraph ends in a paradox: “that nothing would be worse than anything he could say”. Silence, usually the absence of blame, becomes the harshest blame of all. By the end of the paragraph the reader understands that Mara is choosing between two discomforts, and that the one she fears more is being judged.

The paragraph follows claim → evidence → effect → link. Each quotation is short and sits inside a sentence of analysis. A conclusion then takes two or three sentences, adds no new evidence, and says how the features work together to answer the question.

Worked example 2: form and style in a poem

In poetry, lines, breaks, stanzas and sound all carry meaning.

Original text written for Marlbridge – poem

Inventory

My mother kept the buttons in a tin that once held biscuits for a Christmas long before my time. She never threw one out. Brass ones from a coat my grandfather wore to work, and wore to church, and wore to wait outside the hospital. Small pearl ones, cracked. A red one no one could explain.

I sort them now the way she did: by size, then colour, then by nothing I can name. The tin is lighter than I thought it was. I shake it once. It answers, like a voice that knows the house is empty, and speaks up.

Guiding question: How does the poem present memory through ordinary objects?

Form notes from the second reading:

• Line length. The poem is unrhymed, and eleven of its twelve lines have ten syllables. The short line “A red one no one could explain” stops early, like the missing explanation.
• Enjambment. “a Christmas long / before my time” stretches across the line break, so the memory reaches back further than the speaker’s own life.
• Repetition. “wore to work, and wore to church, and wore to wait” builds a life in three phrases; the last runs over the line to “the hospital” and breaks the pattern with grief.
• Stanza break. Stanza 1 is the mother’s past; stanza 2 is the present (“I sort them now”).
• Closing simile. The rattle of the tin “answers, like a voice / that knows the house is empty”. Sound replaces the absent person.

A model paragraph on form:

The stanza break carries the poem’s loss. The first stanza belongs to the mother, who “kept” the buttons and “never threw one out”; the second begins in the present tense, “I sort them now the way she did”. The poem never says that the mother has died, but the white space between the stanzas, and the speaker’s copying of her method, make the absence clear. Memory is presented as something held in habits as well as objects: the speaker keeps the mother present by repeating what her hands once did.

Step 3: manage your time

The brief sets 1 hour 15 minutes at SL and 2 hours 15 minutes at HL. A workable split for one analysis in 75 minutes:

Stage	Time
Guiding question and three readings	15 min
Thesis and plan	10 min
Introduction	5 min
Three body paragraphs	35 min
Conclusion	5 min
Check quotations and links to the question	5 min
Total	75 min

If your paper asks you to write about more than one passage in the HL time, divide the 135 minutes evenly: 65 minutes per analysis, with 5 minutes spare. Finish the first analysis, conclusion included, before you start the second.

Common errors

• Retelling the story. One sentence of context is enough; the rest is analysis.
• Feature-spotting. Devices with no thesis about the guiding question read as a checklist.
• Confusing the speaker with the poet. Write “the speaker”, not the poet’s name, unless the poem makes them the same.
• Ignoring form. In a poem, line breaks, stanza breaks and line length are evidence. In drama, stage directions are evidence.
• Vague effects. “This makes the reader want to read on” fits any text. Say what this feature makes you think about this character or idea.
• Long quotations. Quote a few words inside your own sentence.
• Running out of time. A missing conclusion is a planning failure.

Where to go next

Test yourself with the revision notes, then try the practice questions. For technique vocabulary by form, see the Readers, writers and texts revision notes. For how texts connect across the course, see the Intertextuality study guide.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief, Language A: literature, first assessments for SL and HL 2021 (2019). The passages and model answers on this page are original texts written for Marlbridge.