Mistakes are the best way to learn, and it is no different for students in the English Language and Literature course. Over the two years that you study English Lang Lit, you should be exposed to a wide variety of text types and be familiar with their various features. You should also learn how to analyse these features and understand why they are there. Today, we are going to look at some very common mistakes that students pick up along this two year journey and try to correct them before your final exams.
Not Using the Guiding Question
This is perhaps the biggest mistake and yet the easiest one to fix out of all of the ones we will cover in this article. You may have done a practice Paper 1 Exam already and you will notice that you are always provided with a guiding question. Let’s take a look at a guiding question from one of the May 2022 papers:
How are text and image used in this advertisement to promote domestic tourism? IB English Language and Literature May 2022 Timezone 1 Paper 1 Text 2
The instructions for the Paper 1 makes it very clear that you DO NOT have to use the guiding question:
Use the guiding question or propose an alternative technical or formal aspect of the text to focus your analysis.
BUT! I believe that for most students, not using the guiding question is a big mistake. There are three reasons for this.
First, while you can propose your own angle to look at the text, for most students, this can result in a rather disjointed and descriptive essay. When students do this, they often just comment on the different features that immediately jump out at you without thinking about how it all ties together and so this alternative angle has no particular theme or organisation, costing you many marks not only in Criterion C (for the structure of your essay), but also A and B as you are not able to demonstrate a full understand of how textual features work together. It is much clearer to structure your essay based on the guiding question. The first two paragraphs can be about the textual and visual (image) effects of the text, and the final body paragraph talk about how they both work together, for example.
Second, the guiding question often represents the best point of entry into analysing the text. This is literally the biggest hint that the IB is giving you as to what to focus on! Not sure what features you should look at in this text? Well, the guiding question makes it clear – ‘text and images’. So naturally, without skipping a beat, you should be able to annotate a few textual features and then visual features within the image for your analysis. No need to overthink your analysis, and no need to scratch your head for anything ‘deep’ to comment on. Take the easy way out in Paper 1! That isn’t to say you can’t comment on anything other than the image or the text, but you should link all your observations to either of these elements and how it enhances them.
Third, the guiding question is designed so that it gives you enough to focus on, but not too much that you get lost in the analysis of the text. Remember, you have just 75 minutes for SL students and even less per text for HL students. If your proposed angle for the text is too broad, you risk running out of time talking about all the features and their effects effectively, or worse, skimming through a whole list. This will cost you as the IB doesn’t care that you can find every single thing you can find to comment on, but rather, the depth of your understanding for just a few key features. Obviously, the guiding question will include the most important and salient features you should look at, but just enough that you will have time to write it in the allocated time.
Put yourselves into the shoes of a Paper 1 IB examiner halfway around the world that will be marking your paper. It is an unenviable job. Imagine reading an essay about the same text over and over again. The last thing they want to do is try and figure out what the point of your essay is. If you just answer the guiding question, it will be immediately clear to them that you will look at images and text and assist them in finding your analysis in these two areas. If you have your own question or focus, unless it is super super clear, it is likely that they won’t have a great first impression as you are making them ‘work’ to give you marks.
Analysis myopia
This sounds like a fancy scientific term, but actually is just describing the situation when you are so engrossed in the analysis of your chosen features that you forget to mention how this feature fits within the context of the wider text and how it helps to enhance the effect of other features within the text. I see many students suffer from this. Even when I first started writing Paper 1s, I just wanted to jump straight in and talk about all the connotations of the bright shining sun in the ad and the symbolism it presents! But hold your horses! Before you demonstrate your analytical prowess, take a step back and think: why is this feature in this text, what is its job in the text and how does it change the way you view the text.
An effective analysis of a textual feature in a body paragraph should first include the evidence for the feature, then dive into the specific meaning of this feature. Explain the effect of this feature on the audience first, but then don’t forget to also explain how it enhances the intended effect of the text either by itself or working with other features. Here’s an example:
The colour red really jumps out at you in this text. So let’s try and analyse it but keeping in mind how it works in the text. I know that the colour red gives off a sense of urgency and the liberal use of the colour bombards the audience with this feeling, not to mention how eye-catching it is. That forms my explaination. The effect then, is so they feel they must partake in this sale immediately, before this opportunity passes. Considering the wider context of the text, you can see that the colour red not only draws in the audience to actually ‘look’ at this ad, but also actively encourage them to take action right now! This achieves the intended effect or purpose of the text to persuade you to go! The colour red also helps the typography to stand out, with complimentary effects of the bold typography to this sense of urgency.
So when you are analysing in Paper 1, remember that each feature doesn’t exist in its own bubble, but rather, they exist as part of the wider text. When you keep this in mind, you will have much more insighful analysis not just for the feature itself, but for the wider text.
Less is more
Often students are tempted to fit in every device and feature under the sun into their analysis in the hopes that they can demonstrate how ‘well’ they ‘know’ the text and that they can indeed point them out. However, no where in the criteria does it mark you on your ability to simply identify those features. Instead, it demands that students are able to show their understanding of HOW those features are used to achieve the author’s purpose and its intended or unintended effects on the audience who are interacting with said text. The criteria’s priority is on the effect of choices, or simply finding them, so that should be your priority as well.
I would recommend that you have 2-3 big devices/techniques/features that you can analyse per paragragraph. For our example guiding question above about images and texts, a paragraph on the textual features of the text could focus on perhaps the high modality language used in the text, and also the colloquialisms they use for example. These are ‘big’ features which are facilliated by a variety of smaller, simpler techinques, to create an overall greater effect. So instead of listing out a bunch of smaller techniques you find within a text, choose one that is huge, jumping out at you, and really delve into what smaller choices the author has made that enabled this to be so prominent to your eyes.
A benefit to this macroscopic, then microscopic approach is that you can more easily manage your time within the exam. Allocate an equal amount of time to each macroscopic element allows you to give all features equal weight within the paper, and gives you enough time to fully analyse the effect of each technique rather than overloading your examiner with a whole bunch of techniques that you don’t explain.
Conclusion
Paper 1 is the bread and butter of the English Language and Literature course. Mastering the ways to write a good paper 1 will help you throughout the course as well. I hope that you can take away a few learnings and avoid these mistakes to improve your Paper 1 writing.
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