IB DP Language B: Identities -- Practice Questions

These are original questions written for Marlbridge, in the style and at the standard of the examination. They are not reproduced past-paper questions – the IB holds copyright in its own papers. Use these alongside the official past papers available through your school or the IB store.

Related: Identities study guide and revision notes.

This resource is structured in English to build the comprehension and planning skills Identities requires; apply the same task types to authentic target-language material with your teacher.

Section A – Vocabulary and topic recall

1. Name the five recommended topics within the Identities theme. [5]

2. State the theme’s guiding question. [1]

3. Give one text type Paper 1 might ask you to produce if a prompt draws on this theme. [1]

Section B – Comprehension-style practice

Read the following short original text (written for Marlbridge, in English, modelling the kind of unseen material Identities’ comprehension papers use), then answer the questions below.

A young person describes joining a local skateboarding group after moving to a new city where they knew no one. At first, they felt like an outsider, unfamiliar with the group’s unspoken rules and slang. Over several months, they learned the group’s shared vocabulary, adopted its style of dress, and began to feel a genuine sense of belonging. They note that their family, back in their hometown, barely recognises the person they have become – more confident, more direct, and quicker to challenge authority than before.

4. Identify two specific changes the writer describes in themselves since joining the group. [2]

5. State what originally made the writer feel like an outsider in the group. [2]

6. Explain, using the theme’s guiding question, what this text suggests about the relationship between belonging to a subculture and forming a personal identity. [3]

7. Explain, using cause-and-effect language, why the writer’s family “barely recognises” who they have become. [2]

Section C – Writing-task planning

8. A Paper 1 prompt asks you to write a blog post reflecting on how a hobby, group, or community you have joined has shaped who you are. Outline a plan for this post: state your main idea, and list three points you would include, matched to the register a blog post requires (personal, reflective, first-person) rather than the more formal register of a letter or report. [6]

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Worked answers

1. Lifestyles, health and well-being, beliefs and values, subcultures, and language and identity. [5]

2. How do language and culture contribute to forming an identity? [1]

3. Any valid example specified by the syllabus, e.g. a blog post, an article, a formal letter, or a diary entry. [1]

4. Any two of: learned the group’s shared vocabulary/slang, adopted the group’s style of dress, became more confident, became more direct, became quicker to challenge authority. [2]

5. Unfamiliarity with the group’s unspoken rules and slang. [2]

6. The text suggests that learning a subculture’s specific language and unspoken conventions (its “rules and slang”) is presented as the mechanism through which belonging, and a shift in personal identity, actually happens – not a side effect of joining the group but the process by which the writer’s identity itself changes. This directly illustrates the guiding question’s claim that language and culture contribute to forming an identity: the writer’s growing fluency in the subculture’s language runs alongside, and appears to drive, their described change in confidence and directness. A strong answer names this connection explicitly rather than only summarising that the writer “changed after joining the group.” [3]

7. The writer reasons that learning the skateboarding group’s language, style and norms (the cause) has changed how they behave day to day – becoming more confident and direct (the effect) – to the point that this behavioural change is visible enough that people who knew them only in their previous context (their family) no longer recognise the shift, an explicit because/as-a-result chain linking cultural immersion in the new group to a personal, visible change in identity. [2]

8. A strong plan states a clear main idea (for example, that joining a specific group changed how the writer sees themselves) at the outset, then lists three distinct points suited to a blog post’s personal, reflective, first-person register – for example: (1) a specific before-and-after contrast in the writer’s own behaviour or confidence, using first-person reflective language (“I used to… but now I…”); (2) a concrete detail about learning the group’s shared language or unwritten norms, since specific, sensory detail suits a blog post’s personal tone better than abstract description; (3) a closing reflection connecting the specific experience back to the broader idea of identity formation, inviting the reader to reflect similarly rather than simply concluding with a summary. A strong answer explains briefly why each point suits a blog post’s register specifically, rather than only listing content that could equally suit a formal letter. [6] (2 marks per point: 1 for a relevant point, 1 for correctly matching it to the blog post’s expected register.)

Adapting Section B to your own target language

Once the comprehension approach above feels comfortable in English, repeat the same task type with a genuine target-language text on a related Identities topic (a personal blog post, a magazine interview, or a short opinion piece about lifestyle or belonging), sourced with your teacher. Keep the same question structure – identify specific personal changes described, identify what originally caused difficulty or discomfort, connect the text back to the theme’s guiding question, and explain a stated cause-and-effect relationship – since this structure mirrors how Paper 2’s comprehension questions are actually built around an unseen text, regardless of which target language the course is taught in. Practising the identical task type first in a language you are fully fluent in, then in your target language, isolates the language-comprehension challenge from the task-recognition challenge, which is a more efficient way to build genuine exam readiness than attempting unfamiliar task types and unfamiliar language difficulty at the same time.

Why this practice set uses an English-language model text

Because Language B is taught and examined in many different target languages, this set demonstrates the task types and skills (comprehension of a personal, reflective text, connecting specific detail to the theme’s guiding question, planning a register-appropriate written response) in English so they can be directly adapted to genuine target-language material with a teacher, rather than assuming one specific target language. The comprehension text is deliberately built around personal, reflective content, matching the study guide’s point that Identities leans more heavily on this kind of language than an issue-driven theme like Sharing the Planet.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief – Language B, first assessment 2020, (c) 2018 – the same source cited by the Identities study guide and revision notes. Verified 2026-09-06.