IB Diploma Programme Language A: Literature: Subject Overview

IB Diploma Programme Language A: Literature explores the various manifestations of literature as a powerful mode of writing across cultures and throughout history. The course develops an understanding of the factors that contribute to the production and reception of literature – the creativity of writers and readers, the nature of their interaction with their contexts and with literary tradition, and the ways language can give rise to meaning and effect.

Syllabus components and teaching hours

Syllabus component	SL hours	HL hours
Readers, writers and texts	50	80
Time and space	50	80
Intertextuality: connecting texts	50	80
Total	150	240

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.

How it’s assessed

Language A: Literature shares the same overall assessment structure as Language A: Language and Literature, though the papers focus more exclusively on literary texts. At SL, Paper 1 (guided analysis of two previously unseen literary extracts) is worth 35%, Paper 2 (a comparative essay drawing on studied literary works) is worth 35%, and the individual oral is worth 30%. At HL, Paper 1 remains worth 35%, Paper 2 drops to 25%, and the HL essay – independent written coursework of 1,200 to 1,500 words analysing an aspect of a literary work or works studied during the course – is worth 20%, with the individual oral making up the remaining 20%.

The individual oral requires students to explore, in a prepared spoken response, how a global issue of their choosing is presented in an extract from one of the literary works they have studied, before extending the discussion to a second work. As with Language A: Language and Literature, the HL essay is the component that most clearly separates HL assessment from SL, since it is completed only by students taking the course at Higher Level.

What each syllabus component covers

Readers, writers and texts focuses on close literary technique – narrative voice, poetic form, dramatic structure – and on the specification’s central idea that reading is an active process: readers construct meaning from a writer’s choices rather than simply receiving a single fixed meaning. Because this course studies literary works exclusively, this component goes deeper into technique than the equivalent component in Language A: Language and Literature, which must divide its attention between literary and non-literary texts. A strong answer within this component does not merely name a technique – it explains what interpretive possibilities that specific choice opens up or closes off for the reader, and this skill of moving from technique to effect transfers directly into Paper 1’s guided analysis of an unseen literary extract.

Time and space examines how a work’s historical, geographical, cultural and social context of production and reception shapes both what it means and how it is read, including how the same work can be read differently by audiences separated by time or place. ** Intertextuality: connecting texts** is where the course’s exclusively literary reading list becomes a resource for genuine comparison across literary history and form: works can echo or pay homage to an earlier text, respond critically to it in dialogue, or deliberately subvert its conventions and assumptions, and revising this component means practising the identification of a specific, genuine point of connection – a shared theme, a shared form, or a direct reference – rather than describing two works side by side without relating them.

The individual oral in more detail

The individual oral asks each student to explore, in a prepared spoken response of roughly 10 minutes followed by discussion, how a global issue of their own choosing is presented within an extract from one of the literary works studied during the course, before extending that analysis to a second studied work. Students select the global issue themselves and are expected to root their discussion in close analysis of authorial choices – narrative technique, structure, form – rather than discussing the issue in the abstract, since the assessment rewards close textual grounding over general commentary on the issue itself.

The HL essay

Students taking the course at Higher Level additionally complete the HL essay, an independent piece of written coursework between 1,200 and 1,500 words analysing a specific aspect of one or more of the literary works studied. Because it is produced independently rather than under exam conditions, the HL essay is the one component where sustained, well-researched argument built over multiple drafts is possible, and it is this independent-research element – not simply extra content – that most clearly distinguishes HL assessment from SL.

Weighting across the two levels

Comparing SL and HL side by side clarifies where the real assessment differences lie: Paper 1 is weighted identically at both levels, so the guided literary analysis skill matters equally regardless of level, while Paper 2’s comparative essay is weighted more heavily at SL (35%) than at HL (25%), where the balance shifts instead toward the independently produced HL essay. Students should read this as a signal about where preparation time is best spent at each level, not simply as an administrative detail.

Source

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