Please note:  The purpose of this information is to elaborate on the nature of the IB assessment tasks, define and explain the assessment criteria and their implications, share observed challenges in students’ submitted assessment work, and offer strategies and approaches for assessment preparation.   

This post is not meant to replace a reading of the IB Language A: Language and Literature Subject Guide or the Teacher Support Materials available on My IB.  Those resources should always be the first stop for teachers in checking the requirements of each assessment task and how the task should be facilitated.   

Individual Oral Overview

30% at SL; 20% at HL

Nature of the task

• The Individual Oral is 15 minutes long. For the first 10 minutes, the students will deliver their response to the prompt, which is then followed up with a 5-minute discussion led by the teacher.  
• The prompt for the Individual Oral is: “Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of one of the works and one of the bodies of work that you have studied.¹” 
• The rubric on which the Individual Oral is assessed is worth a total of 40 marks. 
• On the day of the exam, students will bring blank copies of their literary and non-literary extracts as well as 10 bullet-pointed notes into the room. The extracts they choose should be representative of the way in which a global issue is presented in the work and may also provide the students a few talking points about authorial choices that contribute to that presentation as well. The extracts are not the center of the discussion but rather serve as launching points to talk about the work(s) as a whole, and Criterion C assesses that the students are balanced in their examination of both extracts and works. 
• After the first 10 minutes, teachers ask the student follow-up questions. This can be an opportunity for a teacher to nudge students in the direction of aspects of the prompt/assignment requirements that were not adequately addresses in the assessment.  While it may be helpful for the teacher to pre-prepare follow up questions, the teacher-student discussion tends to be more organic and helpful to the student if the questions build upon points the student has made in their oral.  Furthermore, teachers should avoid leading questions, or general questions about the global issue outside of the context of the works. 

Selection of the global issue

• A global issue is an issue within the work that exists transnationally but is also something that manifests in local contexts. Something like “how a community is dependent on fracking in Colorado” would be too precise to be a global issue. Something broader like “how the harvesting of energy sources impacts communities” might be more appropriate as it can be applied to other locations and situations. 
• Students and teachers should refer to the five Fields of Inquiry in the Language A guide² or the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as launching points for developing more specific global issues.  

Fields of Inquiry  

• Culture, identity and community 
• Beliefs, values and education 
• Politics, power and justice 
• Art, creativity and the imagination 
• Science, technology and the environment 

Sustainable Development Goals 

• The student should further narrow the global issue from these broad fields.  A specific and more narrowed global issue helps students sustain focus in the task and adequately develop their ideas in the 10 minutes allocated to the presentation portion of the Individual Oral.  
• Penalty:  Orals that discuss more than one global issue will score a zero in Criterion A. 

Selection of works/bodies of work

Selection of the extracts

Selection of the extracts  

The extract should contain 40 consecutive lines (max), or the equivalent. 

• “The equivalent” can be interpreted as a significant moment or sequence in a text or film that is typically a page in length. 
• A complete text such as a poem, song, or advertisement can be an extract. 
• An extract from a film may highlight of a sequence of stills, or a mix of stills and consecutive lines of screenplay. The stills should correspond to the extracted portion of the screenplay. 
• A “sequence of stills” averages around 4 stills but may be shorter or longer depending on the depth and complexity of the sequence. 
• For images, extracts should be replicated in color when possible. 
• Adding line numbers and/or figure numbers to the extract will help the listener locate specific parts of the extract with ease. 

A note about uploading extracts:  
The IB requires that candidates upload the non-literary and literary extracts. Each extract’s provenance should be identified with the title of work/body of work and author. The 10 bullet points are not necessary to upload, but teachers should hold onto them in case a review needs to be made.  

What is the Individual Oral Assessing?

Criterion A:  Knowledge, understanding, and interpretation (10 marks)

Defined Terms

Knowledge	Knowledge of a work or body of work is shown by recalling details from a work (related to plot, characters, conflicts, setting, use of language, etc.) or specific details about a work (such as its genre, era, style, etc.) that are related to the global issue. These details are clearly evident and verifiable in the work. Knowledge of an extract is also shown through situating it within the larger work and justifying its significance to the work as a whole in relation to the stated global issue.
Understanding	Understanding may be demonstrated through summary, interpretations, inferences, and explanations because they require students to construct meaning from the work that is related to the chosen global issue.  In this construction, students use their general knowledge and understanding (of people, relationships, cultures, literary principles, etc.) to process or infer meaning that is communicated explicitly, heavily implied, or self-evident.
Interpretation	An “interpretation” is an argument about a work’s implicit meaning. Specifically, with this assessment, the student must infer what the text is implying about the chosen global issue. Interpretive arguments identify complex ideas and issues developed by an author and usually pay close attention to details and ambiguities in a work. Because the communication and deconstruction of implicit meanings is a complex process, interpretations tend to appreciate tensions and contradictions in a work as well as the ways in which a work’s culture or the reader’s culture might influence interpretive conclusions.  In all cases, interpretations are persuasive arguments that need to be supported with clear references to the work.
References to the text	Students are expected to make references to both the extracts they have brought in as evidence but also to other moments in the work and body of work that help support their interpretation about the presentation of the global issue. These references can either be direct quotes or paraphrases; depending on what claim the student is making, one may be more appropriate than the other.

Notes

• The student’s answer to the prompt should consist of two overarching conclusions, one for how each work/body of work presents the global issue. These can be presented as thesis statements at the beginning of the oral. According to the rubric, orals that do not interpret implications in relation to the global issue (i.e., by offering a conclusion) are unlikely to score above a 4 in criterion A. 
• The response should discuss the ways in the global issue is presented in both the extract and the work/body of work.  Responses that only discuss the extract or only discuss the work/body of work are unlikely to show “adequate” understanding.   
• When the extract serves as optimal evidence for how the global issue is presented in the entire work, this helps the student balance their discussion, make connections, and fluidly discuss both the extract and the work/body of work. 
• During the 5-minute teacher-led discussion, students can demonstrate further knowledge and understanding through their responses to their teacher’s questions which can enhance their mark in Criterion A. This can be an opportunity to recall more details from the work and body of work or add more nuance to an interpretation.

Activities and protocols that develop skills related to knowledge, understanding, and interpretation.

Criterion B:  Analysis and evaluation (10 marks)

Defined Terms

Analysis	To analyze is to separate and identify the parts of a whole to discover various interrelationships. The “whole” is the work or body of work.  One can begin to break down the parts of a literary or non-literary work by considering its form, mode, structure, features, and use of language.
Textual features and/or authorial choices	Textual features and authorial choices are the parts that make up the whole as referenced above. In literary texts, these can include choices in structure, narrative perspective, genre, style, setting, characters, repeated patterns of imagery or figurative language, motifs, etc.  In non-literary texts, these can include language features, visual components of the text, structural choices, text type specific elements, etc.
Evaluation	When students “evaluate” they are calculating the importance and value of the author’s choices in the context of the development of the global issue. After students separate and identify the “parts of the whole” through analysis, students show appreciation for the content and features that play a significant role in developing the presentation of the global issue in the extracts, work, and body of work.

Notes

• The identification of authorial choices, whether they be visual, rhetorical, formal, or literary, can only get students so far. These features should be mentioned only if they support claims about the presentation of the global issue (see the “Focus” element of Criterion C). If the analysis of authorial choices is not in reference to the global issue, the rubric indicates that students are unlikely to score in the adequate bands and above. 
• Students are rewarded for making meaningful references to genre-specific and text type-specific elements and using corresponding terminology correctly, assuming the analysis is in reference to the presentation of the global issue.  “Simple” or more obvious authorial choices are rewarded in the middle bands of the criterion.  The higher bands reward attention to detail and perceptive insight which often includes a careful, close reading of the work.  
• Because the IO prompt asks the student to consider both the “content and form” of the works, there is an implied expectation they address the literary form and its corresponding formal features and then also the “format,” or structural components, of the non-literary body of work.  As teachers prepare students for this assessment, they can remind students to consider structural choices (in addition to language choices) made in the extract and in the work as whole.  
• Credit for “evaluation” is only attainable in the top two mark bands of Criterion B. Students must work to appreciate how those authorial choices present the global issue. Their conclusions might even weave in discussions about why the text communicates its ideas about the global issue in a specific way; it might have to do with the specific formal elements of a text type, the function of literary or non-literary texts, the culture in which the text was produced, etc. 
• During the 5-minute follow-up discussion, teachers might ask students to provide further analysis of the extracts and the works which can enhance the student’s mark in Criterion B. This can be an opportunity to further detail the effects of specific authorial choices or recognize patterns of or connections between authorial choices that work to develop the global issue.  

Activities and protocols that develop skills related to analysis and evaluation

Criterion C:  Focus, organization, and development (10 marks)

Defined Terms

Focus on the task	A focused oral will sustain its attention on the presentation of the chosen global issue in the literary and non-literary works or bodies of work rather than straying into other aspects of the extracts or works. Students should also avoid discussing the global issue outside of the texts.
Balanced treatment	The task is not comprised of a commentary on the extracts alone; equal and appropriate time and attention should be applied to examining the extracts as well as speaking about the work and body of work as a whole.
Development of ideas	Students have made thoughtful choices about the order in which they present their claims, references to the text, analysis, and explanation so that the points in the oral build upon one another, producing a cohesive response to the works throughout the discussion.
Connection of ideas	The “connection of ideas” can also be read as the progression from one claim to the next, including when the student switches back and forth between talking about the extract and work (or body of work) as a whole. Signposting is one way of highlighting the ways in which ideas are connected throughout the oral.

Notes

Image by Daniel Friesenecker from Pixabay