Please note: all course materials, activities and lessons are now delivered via OneNote. Students have their own area plus access to shared content library and collaborative space. As the year progresses more teaching material and activities to accompany our study of each text will be made available in OneNote. Links to the OneNote Content Library for each class, which also contain the essential information from the IB Study Guide, are available here:

This course aims to enable students to:

  • engage with a range of texts, in a variety of media and forms, from different periods, styles, and cultures
  • develop skills in listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing, presenting and performing
  • develop skills in interpretation, analysis and evaluation
  • develop sensitivity to the formal and aesthetic qualities of texts and an appreciation of how they contribute to diverse responses and open up multiple meanings
  • develop an understanding of relationships between texts and a variety of perspectives, cultural contexts, and local and global issues, and an appreciation of how they contribute to diverse responses and open up multiple meanings
  • develop an understanding of the relationships between studies in language and literature and other disciplines
  • communicate and collaborate in a confident and creative way
  • foster a lifelong interest in and enjoyment of language and literature.

Course content

The syllabus comprises three areas of exploration: readers, writers and texts, time and space and intertextuality – connecting texts. Works are chosen from a variety of literary forms and reflect a range of historical and cultural perspectives. Students are provided with opportunities to extend their studies and make fruitful comparisons. Standard Level students will study at least 7 texts, Higher Level at least ten. A number of texts are studied in translation. Teaching and learning is structured around seven concepts that occupy a central position in the study of literature. They interact with the areas of exploration in numerous ways and contribute a sense of continuity in transition from one area to the next. They are: identity, culture, creativity, communication, perspective, transformation and representation.

External Assessment (70 %):

For both Higher and Standard level

Paper 1:Guided literary analysis (35%)

Paper 2: Comparative essay (Higher level: 25%, Standard level: 35%)

For Higher level only:

An essay on one literary text or work studied during the course (1200 – 1500 words, 20%).

Internal Assessment Standard level (30%), Higher level (20%) - Individual oral

Supported by an extract from one work written originally in the language studied and one from a work studied in translation, students will offer a prepared response of 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions. The students respond to the prompt: ‘Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of two of the works that you have studied.’

Conflict and authority

IB English Literature: course information

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi