IB Diploma Programme Language B – Experiences Study Guide

This study guide teaches Experiences, the second of the five prescribed themes in the content outline of IB Diploma Programme Language B. It follows the IB Language B subject brief for first assessment 2020, which remains the examined course until the new syllabus is first assessed in May 2029, so it applies to the 2026, 2027 and 2028 sessions. It covers SL and HL: the brief places the difference between the levels in the competency you show in receptive, productive and interactive skills. It is written in English; apply each point to your target language.

Use it with the Experiences revision notes and the Experiences practice questions. For the whole course, see the Language B course hub and the printable Language B checklist.

What this unit covers

Part of the theme	What you must be able to do	SL/HL
Guiding principle	Explain what the theme asks you to explore, and apply it to any text	Both
Six optional recommended topics	Understand and use the vocabulary of each topic your class studies	Both
Two possible questions	Use them as lenses to discuss a text, image or experience	Both
Narrative language	Tell and follow a story across past, present and future	Both; HL expects more complex structures
Paper 1 on an Experiences task	Produce one written text for a clear context, audience and purpose	Both; higher word range at HL
Individual oral	Discuss a stimulus that links to the theme	SL: visual image. HL: excerpt from a literary work

The theme as the brief states it

The brief gives each theme a guiding principle, a set of optional recommended topics and some possible questions. For Experiences they are:

• Guiding principle: “Explore and tell the stories of the events, experiences and journeys that shape our lives.”
• Optional recommended topics: leisure activities; holidays and travel; life stories; rites of passage; customs and traditions; migration.
• Possible questions: “How does our past shape our present and our future?” and “How and why do different cultures mark important moments in life?”

Two words in that list matter. First, the theme is prescribed but the topics are optional and recommended: your teacher chooses which topics to teach. Second, the principle says “explore and tell”. Experiences is the theme most tied to narrating. You are expected to understand other people’s stories and to tell your own, in order, with a clear sense of time.

Identities asks who you are; Sharing the planet asks what problems communities face. Experiences asks what happened, how it changed someone, and what it means now.

The six recommended topics

Topic	Vocabulary areas to build	Angle that links to a possible question
Leisure activities	hobbies, sport, clubs, free time, frequency, preferences	How has the way your family spends free time changed across generations?
Holidays and travel	transport, accommodation, itineraries, sights, problems on a trip, weather	What did a trip teach you that you still use now?
Life stories	stages of life, achievements, turning points, family history, memory	How does one past event explain someone’s present?
Rites of passage	birthdays, coming of age, graduation, first job, weddings, naming	How and why do cultures mark moving from one stage of life to the next?
Customs and traditions	festivals, food, dress, rituals, heritage, keeping or changing a custom	Why do some customs survive and others fade?
Migration	leaving, arriving, settling, homesickness, belonging, paperwork, a new language	How does a move shape a family’s future?

Build vocabulary in three layers for each topic: nouns (a ceremony, a suitcase), verbs (to celebrate, to settle) and evaluative language (unforgettable, bittersweet). The third layer is the one most often missing, and it turns a list of events into an experience.

The language of experience: telling a story well

Whatever your target language, a strong Experiences text controls time. Four tools do most of the work.

1. Two kinds of past

Most languages distinguish, in some way, between a completed event and a background or repeated situation in the past. In English: “We arrived at midnight” (completed) against “It was raining and everyone was tired” (background), or “We used to spend every summer there” (habit). How your language marks this differs:

• French contrasts the passé composé (completed) with the imparfait (background, habit).
• Spanish contrasts the pretérito indefinido with the imperfecto in the same way.
• German often uses the Perfekt in speech and the Präteritum in written narrative.

Check with your teacher which contrast your language uses. Mixing the forms up is a language error, not a style choice.

2. Sequencing and time markers

Readers follow a story through markers: at first, the next morning, two years later, by the time we arrived, since then, these days. Collect them in your target language in three groups: past markers, “bridge” markers that link past to now (since then, ever since), and present or future markers (now, these days, one day I hope to). The bridge markers answer the first possible question directly: how the past shapes the present.

3. Reflection and hypothesis

Reflection turns narrative into meaning: “Looking back, I realise that…”, “If I had not missed that train, I would never have met…”. Conditional and hypothetical structures of this kind are examples of the more complex language and structures the brief expects at HL on Paper 1. Use them at SL too when you can control them.

4. Reporting what others said

Life stories often retell what someone said: “My grandfather told me that he had left with one bag.” Reported speech usually shifts tense and pronouns.

Worked example: from a list to a story

A flat account (original text written for Marlbridge):

I went to my cousin’s graduation. There was a ceremony. There was a meal. It was good. I came home.

The same content told as an experience:

When my cousin walked on to the stage, the whole family went quiet. My aunt, who had left school at fourteen, was crying before his name was even read out. After the ceremony we ate at the restaurant where she had worked for twenty years. Since that day I have thought differently about what a certificate means: it was his, but it was hers too.

What changed, step by step:

1. Two kinds of past — completed events (walked on, ate) set against background (was crying).
2. An earlier past — had left school, had worked pull in the aunt’s life story.
3. Evaluative detail — went quiet, was crying show feeling instead of saying “it was good”.
4. A bridge to the present — since that day I have thought links past to present, which answers the theme’s first possible question.
5. Cultural meaning — the last line explains why the moment mattered to this family, which answers the second possible question.

Text types that suit this theme

The subject brief does not list text types, so your teacher will share the list and conventions from the full subject guide. The table shows text types that suit Experiences content well. It is not a list of what will be set.

Text type	Experiences use	Conventions to show
Diary or journal entry	A day on a trip, the night before a ceremony	Date, first person, informal, feelings, reflection at the end
Blog post	A travel experience, a festival, a new hobby	Title, engaging opening, direct address to readers, informal to neutral register
Informal email or letter	Telling a friend about a move or a celebration	Greeting and sign-off, shared references, questions to the reader
Article	A feature on a local custom or a migrant’s life story	Headline, clear paragraphs, neutral register, quotations from people
Interview	Questions to someone about their life story	Introduction of the person, question-and-answer layout, follow-up questions
Speech	A talk at a graduation or community event	Address to the audience, signposting, rhetorical questions, a clear ending

Worked example: planning a Paper 1 answer

The brief states that Paper 1 tests productive skills with one writing task from a choice of three, worth 25% of the final grade (30 marks). Here is an original prompt of the kind you might choose, written for Marlbridge:

Your school is collecting stories from families who moved to the area from somewhere else. Write a text for the school magazine about how one family member’s move shaped your family.

Step 1 — context, audience, purpose. The brief names context, audience, purpose, meaning and variation as the course’s conceptual understandings. Here: context is a school collection project; audience is students, parents and teachers; purpose is to inform and to move the reader.

Step 2 — text type and register. A magazine article fits: headline, neutral but warm register, quotations from the family member.

Step 3 — plan in time order, then reflect.

1. Opening: a vivid moment (the day of arrival) with a headline that names the person.
2. Before: why they left, using background past forms.
3. The move: two or three completed events in sequence, with time markers.
4. Settling: one difficulty (a new language, work, homesickness) and how it was solved.
5. Now: a bridge paragraph (since then, today) showing the effect on the family.
6. Close: one sentence answering “how does our past shape our present?”.

SL and HL. The brief says HL Paper 1 tasks “require more complex language and structures and demand higher-order thinking skills”, with a higher word range. For this prompt, HL writers might weigh gains and losses of the move, or compare two generations’ views, rather than only recounting.

Reading and listening on Experiences texts

Paper 2 tests receptive skills in separate listening and reading sections, each worth 25% (listening 25 marks, reading 40 marks). Experiences texts are often narratives, so practise following time and change:

• Mark every time marker as you read. A question about when or in what order is answered by them.
• Track who is speaking. Do not credit the narrator with a view that belongs to someone they quote.
• Separate event from feeling. Many answers ask how a person felt or why an event mattered, not what happened.
• Note contrasts between then and now. Words like still, no longer, used to signal change.

The individual oral and Experiences

The oral is internally assessed, worth 25% (30 marks). At SL the stimulus is a visual image clearly relevant to one or more themes. An Experiences image might show a festival, a station platform or a graduation. Describe briefly, then ask what event this is, what came before it and what it will lead to: the theme’s past-present-future shape.

At HL the stimulus is an excerpt from one of the two literary works you study, originally written in the target language. Early in the course, note where your works show turning points, departures or ceremonies that shape a character’s life, so you can link an excerpt to Experiences where it fits.

Comparing cultures without stereotyping

The second possible question asks how and why cultures mark important moments. Answer with specific examples from texts you have studied and hedged language (in some families, in the region the text describes), never “everyone in country X…”.

Common errors on this theme

• Listing events without meaning. “Then we… then we…” with no reflection does not show what the experience did to anyone.
• Tense drift. Starting a story in the past and slipping into the present halfway through, or using the completed-past form for background description.
• Missing the bridge to now. The first possible question is about past, present and future. A text that stops in the past answers only part of it.
• Wrong register for the text type. A diary written like a formal report, or a magazine article full of slang.
• Generic travel vocabulary only. Holidays and travel is one of six topics. Revise rites of passage and migration vocabulary as seriously.

Where next

• Experiences revision notes and practice questions
• Syllabus guide, subject overview, exam preparation and assessment revision notes

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief, Language B, first assessment 2020 (2018). The guiding principle, optional recommended topics and possible questions quoted on this page are taken from its content outline.