Literary texts we'll be working with

Carol Ann Duffy's poetry (Europe, the UK, 20th-21st century; SL/HL)

Kate Chopin's short stories (America, the US, 19th century, SL/HL)

Hendrik Ibsen's play ""A Doll's House" (Europe, Norway, translation, 19th century, SL/HL)

NB! The three above are the ones you can use for the IO.

In your IO, you are not supposed to mention your name or the name of your school. So, start with something like the following:

I'm a Language A English Language and Literature student, and for my Individual Oral today I have chosen the Global Issue of ...

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie\s novel "Purple Hibiscus" (Africa + America, Nigeria / the US; 21st century, SL/HL)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (Europe, Russia, translation, 20th century, HL/SL?)

Ian McEwan's novel "Atonement" (Europe, the UK, 20th-21st century, HL)

PhilpotNew Task 3.12 rewritten for small groups (do NOT go there unless instructed to do so)

* Read the intro and point a (PhilpotNew p 135 Towards assessment).

* Go to Chapter 8 and read / discuss pp 321-322 (up till the end of Task 8.1).

* Refresh your memory of what is available on the blog in connection with the IO (and where exactly).

* Back to p 135. Read Texts 2.27 and 2.28 quickly, discuss point b, and pick a global issue to concentrate on.

* Annotate both texts, and do point c on your own.

* Instead of point d, share your outlines in your small groups.

* Do points e-j using feedback from your small group members.

* Save everything in your portfolio.

NB! You are not allowed to use the same texts for your real IO that you have used for this kind of practice.

Do NOT go past this line yet!

Analysis of The Diet by Carol Ann Duffy (only to be consulted after you have done PhilpotNew Task 3.12 as fully as possible): https://poemanalysis.com/carol-ann-duffy/the-diet/

Task: consult the online analysis, and add another layer to your annotation of the poem.

A student's analysis of Text 2.28: 

https://sites.psu.edu/rclvandevelde/2013/10/17/unit-two-paper-draft-two/

Beauty and fitness adverts: 

https://flashbak.com/beauty-and-fitness-adverts-the-fine-art-of-preying-on-a-bad-self-image-5469/

Portfolio task: Use Text 2.28 as the text for practice for Paper 1, with this guiding question:

How does this advertisement use written and visual language to ‘speak’ to its reader?

Teaching others: The World's Wife

Teaching presentation of ~15 min each.

Specific poems in this order (the person whose name is there is responsible for the presentation but they can ask one other person to help them in this (but not do their work for them)).

Thetis (Pradny)

Queen Herod (Steven)

Pilates' Wife (Enes)

Mrs Sisyphus (Sithil)

    Bonus: Mrs Darwin

Mrs Aesop (Enes)

Queen Kong (Pradny)

Mrs Beast (Neel)

Medusa (Sithil)

Circe (Anastasia)

Mrs Lazarus (Frederik)

Pygmalion's Bride (Timo)

    Bonus: Mrs Icarus

Salome (Timo)

Penelope (Steven)

Delilah (Anastasia)

Frau Freud (Frederik)

Look at it from (at least) two viewpoints: 

* as if this were your chosen IO text (Global Issue! + reference to the same global issue in other poems by Carol Ann Duffy)

* what kind of non-lit text would treat the same topic (that could be used for Paper 1 practice)

* what kind of Body of Work (non-literary) could be connected to this via the Global Issue

NB! In addition to teaching, create a blog post with the most salient points and any suitable links.

Individual Oral 3

Webinar: 

https://ibo.webex.com/recordingservice/sites/ibo/recording/a0aeff5d0ae741419b09604c91e22539/playback (1:11:41)

Brad Philpot has suggested the following outline:

NB! MINUS the comparison / contrast!!!

Some ideas on this from IB teachers online:

* This outline would just be a quick fix help for the ones who are still grappling to get an understanding of how the IO needs to be structured and presented. Following this to the T would make it a bit too formulaic.

* I would add to this the need for a smooth transition between the two four-minute discussions, i.e., when moving to the other text. This is also a nice place to use a statement of comparison or contrast. Something like "While this author covers the Global Issue [in this significant way], it is seen differently in the other text [in this significant way]..."

* I have had some really nice framing of points about the GI made as comparison or contrast within those 4:00 segments. To me, this can show deeper knowledge and analysis. I do not discourage comparison and contrast, but do urge students to "use it perhaps once or twice to frame deep thinking" and not to "rely on it as an organizational tool."

* An example from the entire work? So If the student has chosen a strip from Calvin and Hobbes, then he has to give an example from another strip? --> Yes, from 2 others.

* examples from the rest of the work/bow can be referenced in the outline. The moderator does not have to see them. But I think this is an excellent way of showing understanding of the work/bow (criterion a)

Global issues - hopefully helpful

The global issue chosen for consideration should be significant on a wide scale, be transnational in nature, and be an issue that has an impact felt in everyday local contexts. The issue should be clearly evidenced in the extracts or texts chosen. 

See also this (especially what you could do in your portfolio to prepare for your IO): https://www.sevanoland.com/global-issues.html

These lists might be a starting point for thinking about more global issues: https://simplicable.com/en/global-issues
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_global_issues

GI question from a Jennifer on www: Some students want to use “mental health” as their global issue. How can I explain to them that this is not enough?

Suggested answers:

* Mike: That's really more of a topic. Something like "the way society values mental health less than physical health" is a GI. I'd ask them "what do your texts say about mental health?" to guide them towards something more specific.

* Alison: I try to explain it the way that I explain theme. If you just have one or two words, it's a topic. To make it a global issue, put it into a sentence.

* Melissa: What ABOUT mental health? They need to consider a more full statement.

* Kate: I ask them “what about topic”, i.e. “what about mental health” and then rattle off some narrowing factors, such as societal prejudice vs growing acceptance, treatment and support for etc.

* Keone: This is from the EE guide in psychology, it may help: Topics such as eating disorders, dysfunctional behaviours (eg schizophrenia or depression) and forensic

psychology are popular with students. However, they pose a challenge unless students focus their

research question very tightly. These topics are extremely ambitious, requiring far more time and

experience than students generally have at their disposal.

* Tayyaba: Global issue is an umbrella term. They’re required to explore how/ to what extent that GI IS portrayed by authors; meaning they have to prove a point in the commentary (eg…to what extent/ how ignorance/ poverty/male dominance affect/ or control result in ….)

(All the people cited are IB DP teachers.)

Borrowing from PhilpotEducation:

A global issue has three qualities: 

• transnational
• significant
• relevant to local contexts

Many issues meet these three criteria, from 'coming of age' to 'climate change'. The IB has outlined 5 'fields of inquiry' under which global issues should fall. These are broad areas of study and rather abstract in nature.

5 Fields of inquiry

• Culture, identity and community

• Beliefs, values and education

• Politics, power and justice

• Art, creativity and the imagination

• Science, technology and the natural world

Examples of global issues

• The lack of social and economic mobility for the middle class

• The challenges of raising children in a digital age 

• The unrealistic representation of young women by global fashion brands

• The rise of nationalism and xenophobia in an age of globalisation

It helps to think of global issues as themes that appear somewhere on a ladder of abstraction. A 'ladder of abstraction' is a representation of how real-life people and situations connect to abstract ideas. Below is an example of a ladder of abstraction that includes racism. Notice how the words in the list below go from the concrete and specific to the abstract and general. What issue can you realistically explore in a 10-minute oral? 

Ladder of abstraction

CONCRETE > Michael Brown > Ferguson > racial profiling > #blacklivesmatter > racial profiling > racism > discrimination > injustice > ABSTRACT

Individual Oral 2

 Also see my 15 Sept 2021 blog post.

https://www.englishcollaborative.com/ib-english-a-language-and-literature-individual-oral-assessment-considerations/

NB! The poems don't need to be from the same collection to be the same body of work... A work or body of work can include texts from different periods of an author’s or creator’s output, eg in the case of a poetic work, the poems need not come from the same book of poetry but may come from different books the poet has published in their writing career.

Task: create a timeline of all the poems that we discuss (plus the ones you read on your own), with the mention of in which collection they were first published.

Looking at any text from different perspectives

Any text can be looked at from different perspectives, and analysed as is suitable towards different IB aims.

Paper 1: 

Take a careful look at assessment criteria A and B, and consider how you would approach this particular text in light of the requirements of these criteria. Identify the text type and its characteristics. (See the characteristics of the text as listed in the subject guide.) You also need to be able to analyze a text to see the extent to which it follows the characteristics of the text type, or subverts them. If an advertisement, for example, does not clearly identify the product, consider the reasons why that choice was made and think about the intended effect on the audience. 

Individual oral: 

Look at criteria A and B for the IO. There are some similarities between the criteria in the IO and those in Paper 1 but the IO also requires students to make connections between extracts from a literary work and non-literary body of work (BOW). The IO must make connections with the global issue (=GI) that the student has chosen, so it is advisable to consider how a text is linked to different global issues.

HL essay:

This is an in-depth analysis of a non-literary BOW or a literary work the student has studied in class. Imagine this text is from a non-literary body of work and consider possible approaches you could take with the 1200-1500 word HL essay. This could include evaluating connections between this text and the seven central concepts in DP Language A Language and Literature.

Political cartoons BOW

IO, BOWs & GIs: What are they? (Individual Oral, Body of Work, Global Issue - you can consult relevant blog posts)

Political cartoons: work starts now and carries on into both homework and subsequent classwork, and ends up both in your portfolio and presented to class:

* detailed discussion of PhilpotNew U 1.4

* doing the tasks mentioned in my previous blog post on political cartoons

* preparing to curate and present to class a Body of Work (= BOW): a set of about 15 political cartoons by the same author (functioning predominantly in the English language in the English-speaking world or globally) whose work has several Global Issues (= GIs) evident in them.

While presenting, you show the whole set of cartoons to class, tell us about the background to the author, the GIs you have chosen and how they are represented in the author's work, and choose 2 cartoons for looking at in detail in class with concentrating on different aspects, e.g. how symbols have been used, or how words and pictures complement each other, or how the ambience adds to the reception of the cartoons, etc.  You decide which cartoons to concentrate on, and how exactly you do this, and which IB LangLit aims this will help you to achieve.

Individual oral (=IO)

The individual oral addresses the following prompt:

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 texts that you have studied. 

https://www.sevanoland.com/global-issues.html

LangLit Subject Guide p 55!!!

IBO has released / revealed a new IO form that supposedly students have to fill in to help themselves during the process. Have a good look at it. This is also available on Tera in a more user-friendly form.

There is also an official IO outline form from IB on Tera.

I challenge you to find an easily-understandable explanation of what a line of inquiry is, and if you find something that makes a lot of sense, share it here with all of us.

You can do whatever you want to prepare for your IO with the help of a classmate, but according to IB, if you do a mock IO, it diminishes your choices considerably because you are not allowed to use the same extract(s) in the real IO

Citing somebody who has delved deep into IB answers:

According to IB Answers: "The individual oral is an exploration of the representation of a global issue in an extract and in the corresponding work or body of work it comes from. It does not only focus on the part but on the whole as well. If a student used a poetic work studied for a practice oral, and in spite of choosing as an extract a poem different from the one used in the recorded oral, the whole work would be considered." So, no. The student cannot do a mock IO with the teacher using a different extract from either the literary work or non-literary work he does his actual IO on.

They also say that no other student can use the same work or body  of work, so we will not have any IO mocks.

Since I do not want to narrow your choices, this is it. Anything on the blog, thankfully, does not constitute a mock IO.

Global issues?

 Sustainable development goals

Read: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

Task: Pick one goal that is close to your heart, and find a body of work that would help you towards understanding how this issue is covered in media. Post it on the blog.

Body of work:  entirety of the creative or academic output produced by a particular individual or unit. --> In IB: a set works of the same genre by the same authorship, preferably (at least partly) thematically connected.

Global issues: https://clearingmagazine.org/archives/979

(See also PhilpotNew Chapter 8: The Individual Oral = IO p 321)