IB Diploma Programme Language B: Syllabus Guide

This guide covers the full syllabus structure of IB Diploma Programme Language B, first assessment 2020, for both Standard Level (SL) and Higher Level (HL) students. It complements the subject overview and the assessment revision notes already on the site by setting out what the course actually studies – the five prescribed themes shared with Language ab initio, and how Language B builds on them at a more advanced level of the target language.

Unlike a course built from separate numbered units, Language B’s content is organised entirely around five broad, recurring themes, each explored through written, audio, visual and audio-visual texts in the target language. Each theme carries a guiding principle that frames its recommended topics, and the syllabus brief itself models the kind of open, discussion-driving questions a theme should generate – useful as a starting point for structuring both classroom discussion and independent revision.

Identities

Explores the nature of the self and what it is to be human. Recommended topics include lifestyles, health and well-being, beliefs and values, subcultures, and language and identity. A guiding question the theme returns to repeatedly: how do language and culture contribute to forming an identity?

Experiences

Explores and tells the stories of the events, experiences and journeys that shape our lives. Recommended topics include leisure activities, holidays and travel, life stories, rites of passage, customs and traditions, and migration. This theme asks how the past shapes the present and future, and how different cultures mark important moments in life.

Human ingenuity

Explores the ways human creativity and innovation affect our world. Recommended topics include entertainment, artistic expressions, communication and media, technology, and scientific innovation. It asks what a culture’s artistic expression reveals about it, and how media change the way people relate to each other.

Social organization

Explores the ways groups of people organize themselves, or are organized, through common systems or interests. Recommended topics include social relationships, community, social engagement, education, the working world, and law and order. It asks what role an individual plays within a community, and what role rules and regulations play in forming a society.

Sharing the planet

Explores the challenges and opportunities faced by individuals and communities in the modern world. Recommended topics include the environment, human rights, peace and conflict, equality, globalization, ethics, and urban and rural environments. It asks what environmental and social challenges the world faces and how they might be overcome, and what challenges and benefits globalization brings.

What distinguishes SL from HL

The five themes and the assessment weightings are identical for SL and HL – it is the nature of the assessment, not the mark allocation, that differs. But the assessment durations are not identical: SL and HL sit papers of different lengths, so the two levels cannot be timed identically in practice (see the duration figures below). At HL, Paper 1’s writing tasks require more complex language and structures and demand higher-order thinking skills, with a higher word range to accommodate more complex responses. HL students must also study two literary works originally written in the target language, which SL students are not required to do. This has a direct consequence for the individual oral: the SL stimulus is a visual image relevant to one of the five themes, while the HL stimulus is an excerpt from one of the two literary works studied.

Assessment at a glance

Assessment weightings are identical across SL and HL, so the percentages below apply to both levels equally – but several durations differ between the levels, so do not assume the papers themselves take the same time to sit (see durations below each component).

• Paper 1 (productive skills, 25%) – one writing task chosen from three options, assessing the ability to produce a sustained piece of writing in the target language. Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes at SL (250-400 words), 1 hour 30 minutes at HL (450-600 words).
• Paper 2 (receptive skills, 50% combined) – separate listening (25% weighting, 25 raw marks) and reading (25% weighting, 40 raw marks) sections, testing comprehension of unseen audio and written material across the five themes. Reading is 1 hour at both levels; listening is 45 minutes at SL and 1 hour at HL, so total Paper 2 time is 1 hour 45 minutes at SL and 2 hours at HL.
• Individual oral assessment (internal, 25%) – a spoken response to a visual (SL) or literary (HL) stimulus, externally moderated by IB examiners. Preparation time: 15 minutes at SL, 20 minutes at HL.

Because the weighting split (25%/25%) is even but the raw-mark split is not, reading is worth nearly two-thirds of Paper 2 by raw marks even though it carries the same percentage weighting as listening – a revision plan built purely around the even percentage split will under-prepare reading. Recommended teaching time is 150 hours at SL and 240 hours at HL. Paper 2’s combined 50% weighting also makes receptive skills – listening and reading comprehension – worth as much as the productive writing task and the internal oral combined, which is easy to underestimate when revision time defaults toward practising writing and speaking output over comprehension practice.

How to approach it

Because all five themes are compulsory and are examined through unseen material in Paper 2 (listening and reading), build genuine, broad vocabulary and comprehension practice across all five rather than concentrating only on the topics your class discussed most in speaking practice – an unfamiliar audio or written text on human ingenuity is just as likely to appear as one on identities. For Paper 1’s writing task, the syllabus groups its text types into three broad categories – personal texts (e.g. a blog post, a diary entry, an email or a letter to a friend), professional texts (e.g. a formal letter, a report or an essay), and mass media texts (e.g. an article, an interview or a speech) – and states that the specific examples it gives are neither prescriptive nor exhaustive; the actual text type on offer in any given session is set by that session’s examination instructions, not fixed by the syllabus itself. Practise a range of text types across these three categories under the target language’s real conventions, not simply writing accurate sentences on the topic, since format and register are assessed alongside content – Paper 1 is marked against three criteria (language, message, and conceptual understanding), and the conceptual-understanding criterion specifically penalises a response that ignores the expected text type, register or audience even when the language itself is accurate. HL students should begin their two literary works early and keep working notes linking specific scenes or passages to the five course themes, since the individual oral stimulus is drawn directly from one of these two works and rewards fluent, detailed recall developed over time rather than last-minute rereading.

Language B sits within group 2, language acquisition, alongside Language ab initio – the two share the same five themes and aims, and schools choose between them based on how much prior experience of the target language their students bring, with Language B intended for students who already have some background in it.

Official syllabus

International Baccalaureate Organization, Diploma Programme Subject Brief – Language B, first assessment 2020, © 2018.