IB Diploma Programme Language B – HL: reading literary works Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, for revision and practice on this content. They are not reproduced past-paper questions, and they do not replicate the exam’s exact structure, question count or mark tariffs – the IB holds copyright in its own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available through your school or the IB store.

This practice set covers the HL literature strand of IB Diploma Programme Language B: analysing literary extracts and linking them to Identities, Social organization and Sharing the planet. 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. All questions are HL only. The passages are in English; your own two works are originally written in your target language, so repeat each task on an extract from them.

Learn the method first with the HL literature study guide and the revision notes. Course links: Language B hub · printable checklist.

Questions

1. State what the subject brief requires HL students to study in literature, including the condition on the language, and state what the HL individual oral stimulus is. [3]

Passage A – prose extract (original text written for Marlbridge)

On my first day at the new school, the teacher read my name twice and gave up halfway through the second time. “We’ll call you Sam,” she said, and smiled as if she had handed me a present. By the end of the week everyone called me Sam. I answered to it the way you answer a phone that is not yours: politely, and a little late. At home my mother still said my full name, all four syllables, the way her mother had said it. In the evenings I wrote it on the inside cover of my notebook, where no one else would see, so that I would not forget how it was spelled.

2. Answer briefly, using Passage A.

(a) What name does the teacher decide to use? [1] (b) Where does the narrator write their full name? [1]

3. Identify the simile in the fourth sentence and explain what it shows about the narrator’s feelings. [3]

4. Explain how the teacher is presented through the narrator’s eyes. Refer to one quotation. [3]

5. Link Passage A to the Identities theme. Name a recommended topic and a possible question from the brief, and support the link with evidence. [4]

Passage B – Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854), from Chapter 1, abridged

‘NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. […] Stick to Facts, sir!’

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. […]

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

6. Identify two ways Dickens presents the speaker or his ideas as rigid. For each, give a short quotation and explain its effect. [4]

7. Explain the metaphor of the children as “little vessels”. [3]

8. Link Passage B to Social organization. Name a recommended topic and a possible question from the brief, and explain how the extract answers it. [4]

Passage C – Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid” (written 1881, first published in Poems, 1918), final stanza

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

9. Identify two features of sound or structure in Passage C and explain how they make the stanza persuasive. [3]

10. Individual oral preparation (HL). Treat Passage A as an excerpt from one of your two literary works. Write a plan for discussing it, following the five steps: locate, summarise, analyse, connect, link. [8]

11. Extended discussion. Compare how Passage B and Passage C present something valuable under threat. Write a plan and one model comparative paragraph, and link each passage to a prescribed theme. [10]

Answers

1. Two literary works [1], originally written in the target language [1]. The HL oral stimulus is an excerpt from one of the two literary works studied [1]. [3] Examiner insight: The condition “originally written in the target language” is the point most often dropped; without it the answer describes any literature course.

2. (a) Sam. [1] (b) On the inside cover of their notebook. [1] Examiner insight: Retrieval answers need only the detail asked for; copying the whole sentence risks including wrong information that cancels the mark.

3. Simile: “the way you answer a phone that is not yours” [1]. The name feels borrowed: it belongs to someone else [1]. “Politely, and a little late” shows the narrator conforms on the outside but hesitates inside, so the new name has not become part of who they are [1]. [3] Examiner insight: Strong answers explain the second half of the comparison (“a little late”), not only the obvious first half; that detail carries the feeling.

4. The teacher “smiled as if she had handed me a present” [1]. She believes she is being kind [1], but the narrator’s account shows the name as something taken away, so the scene is ironic: her kindness is a loss seen from the narrator’s side [1]. [3] Examiner insight: Weak answers call the teacher “mean”; strong answers notice that first-person narration gives only the narrator’s view, and that the text shows good intentions with a painful effect.

5. Theme: Identities [1]. Topic: language and identity [1]. Possible question: “How do language and culture contribute to form our identity?” [1]. Evidence: the full name is said “the way her mother had said it”, so it carries family heritage; writing it where “no one else would see” shows the narrator keeping a private identity alive [1]. [4] Examiner insight: A link earns credit when it is argued from the text; naming the theme without evidence is a label, not a link.

6. Two points, each with quotation and effect. For example:

• Repetition of “Facts” (four times in the speech as printed) [1]: the speaker has one idea only and hammers it in, so he sounds obsessive and closed to anything else [1].
• Setting: “plain, bare, monotonous vault” [1]: the empty, tomb-like room mirrors the joyless education he wants [1].

Also creditworthy as either point: the forefinger “underscoring every sentence” (he presses his words on others like written rules), or the imperatives “Plant nothing else, and root out everything else” (orders leave no room for discussion). [4] Examiner insight: Each feature needs its own effect; two quotations followed by one general comment earn fewer marks than two fully developed points.

7. The children are compared to containers [1]. They are passive, with no minds of their own; learning is filling, not thinking [1]. “Imperial gallons” uses the language of measurement, so the narrator mocks the speaker’s system by describing children in its own terms [1]. [3] Examiner insight: The third mark goes to seeing the narrator’s irony; answers that read the metaphor as the narrator’s own view of children miss it.

8. Theme: Social organization [1]. Topic: education [1]. Possible question: “What role do rules and regulations play in the formation of a society?” [1]. The speaker sets one rule, “nothing but Facts”, for “these boys and girls”, and the pupils sit “arranged in order”: the school is shown shaping children to fit a system, and the extract invites the reader to question that rule [1]. [4] Examiner insight: “What is the individual’s role in the community?” would also earn credit if argued; what matters is that the chosen question is answered from the extract.

9. Feature 1: the repetition “Let them be left, / O let them be left” [1]. Feature 2: alliteration of w (“wet… wildness… weeds… wilderness”) [1]. (The rhetorical question “What would the world be…?” is also creditworthy as either feature.) Effect: the stanza sounds like a plea, and the insistent repeated sounds make the wish to protect wild places hard to ignore [1]. [3] Examiner insight: Two features and one effect is enough here, but the effect must say how the sound persuades, not only that it “sounds nice”.

10. The real individual oral is assessed holistically against criteria your teacher will share, not point by point. Indicative points:

• Locate: an early chapter, soon after the narrator arrives at a new school [1].
• Summarise: in one sentence, the teacher renames the narrator and they keep their real name in private [1].
• Analyse 1: the phone simile shows the name feels borrowed [1].
• Analyse 2: the ironic “present” shows kindness that causes loss [1].
• Connect: track through the work whether the narrator reclaims the full name [1].
• Link: Identities, language and identity [1].
• Possible question as a lens: how language contributes to form identity [1].
• Range: complex, hedged language, e.g. “Although the narrator accepts the new name, the hidden writing suggests…” [1]. [8]

Examiner insight: Strong orals spend little time on summary and most on analysis and linking; reading the extract aloud or retelling it is description, not discussion.

11. Indicative points (a real extended response is judged holistically against the IB criteria, not point by point):

• Thesis: both texts defend something that a rigid or careless world threatens: imagination in B, wild nature in C [1].
• B, feature: children as “little vessels” [1]; effect: childhood reduced to storage [1].
• C, feature: the plea “Let them be left” [1]; effect: wildness needs protection [1].
• Method compared: B uses satire and irony; C uses direct, emotional appeal [1].
• Tone compared: B mocks the threat; C pleads against it [1].
• Theme link B: Social organization, education [1].
• Theme link C: Sharing the planet, the environment, and the possible question on environmental challenges [1].
• Evaluation: which approach persuades more, with a reason [1]. [10]

Model comparative paragraph: “Both writers defend something that cannot be measured, but they attack its enemies differently. Dickens lets the speaker condemn himself: by calling the children ‘little vessels’ waiting for ‘imperial gallons’ of facts, the narrator describes them in the speaker’s own language of measurement, so the reader laughs at the system. Hopkins, by contrast, does not mock anyone. His repeated plea, ‘O let them be left’, speaks directly for the wild places, and the alliteration of w makes the stanza sound like the water it protects. Where Dickens shows a society organising children into order, Hopkins asks what the world would lose if nothing were left wild.”

Examiner insight: Strong comparisons weave both texts into each paragraph with a linking word (“by contrast”, “whereas”); writing all of B and then all of C is block comparison and shows less connection.

Where marks are usually lost

• Retelling what happens in the extract instead of explaining how the language works.
• Naming a technique (“alliteration”, “simile”) without explaining its effect in this passage.
• Quoting long sentences; a short, precise quotation with comment is stronger.
• Taking a first-person narrator’s view, or a character’s speech, as the author’s opinion.
• Missing irony: reading Dickens’s narrator as agreeing with the speaker.
• Naming a theme without a recommended topic, a possible question or textual evidence.
• In comparisons, discussing one text fully and then the other, with no link between them.
• In oral plans, spending most of the time on summary and too little on analysis and linking.

Next steps

• HL literature revision notes
• HL literature study guide
• Identities practice questions and Sharing the planet practice questions
• Language B course hub
• Printable Language B checklist
• All free 10-minute diagnostics
• Book a free trial class

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief, Language B, first assessment 2020 (2018). The HL requirements, oral stimulus, topics and possible questions used here are taken from it.