IB Diploma · session May 2027
English A: Literature
Amended guide, first taught September 2024, first assessed May 2026.
Readers, writers and texts
Nothing matches that.
The course in one page
The course in one page. Standard and higher level, for the amended guide, first taught September 2024, first assessed May 2026 — the guide May 2027 candidates sit.
What changed in the amended guide
Three changes that matter for how you prepare:
- Paper 2 is 25 marks, assessed across criteria A, B1, B2, C and D.
- SL studies at least 7 works; HL at least 10, cut from 9 and 13. This reduction applies to Literature only. Language and Literature kept its 4 works at SL and 6 at HL.
- Paper 1 texts carry no line or paragraph numbering, from May 2026, in the digital and the paper format alike. The IB's own Diploma Programme updates of March 2025 states it, and adds that line citations are neither required nor rewarded. Locate by quotation instead, and make the quotation short and exact: that is the skill the change is testing.
What the course is
Literature is not the study of what texts mean. It is the study of how texts make meaning — and the difference decides most marks. A student who explains what a poem is about is paraphrasing. A student who explains how the poem's structure, imagery and voice produce that effect on a reader is doing literary analysis.
The course is organised into three areas of exploration, which are lenses rather than units:
| Area | The question it asks | |
|---|---|---|
| RWT | Readers, writers and texts | How does a text work, and how does it act on a reader? |
| TS | Time and space | How do context and culture shape what a text means? |
| IN | Intertextuality: connecting texts | How do texts speak to one another? |
Seven concepts run throughout: identity, culture, creativity, communication, perspective, transformation and representation.
Assessment
| Standard level | Higher level | |
|---|---|---|
| Paper 1: guided literary analysis | 75 min, 20 marks | 135 min, 40 marks (two analyses) |
| Paper 2: comparative essay | 105 min, 25 marks | 105 min, 25 marks |
| Individual oral | internally assessed | internally assessed |
| HL essay | — | externally assessed coursework |
Educerie models the written papers only. The individual oral and the HL essay are coursework and are not mocked.
Paper 1 gives you an unseen literary text and a guiding question. The guiding question is not optional — it is the question your analysis must answer. Ignoring it is one of the most expensive mistakes available in this subject.
Paper 2 is a comparative essay on two works you have studied, written from a choice of general questions, without the texts in front of you. That means memorised quotations are not optional either.
How it is marked
Not by point schemes but by criteria, each a mark band. For Paper 1 at SL:
| Criterion | Out of | What it is really assessing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Understanding and interpretation | 5 | Do you understand the text, and is your reading supported by evidence? |
| B | Analysis and evaluation | 5 | Do you analyse how the writer's choices produce effects? |
| C | Focus and organisation | 5 | Is there an argument, developed in a coherent structure? |
| D | Language | 5 | Is your own writing clear, accurate and appropriately formal? |
Criterion B is where marks are won and lost. It is the difference between "the poem is about grief" and "the poem's shift from end-stopped lines to enjambment in the final stanza enacts the loss of control the speaker describes". Naming a device earns nothing on its own — the analysis is in the effect.
What a top-band answer does
- Answers the guiding question, and says so in the opening paragraph.
- Has a thesis — an arguable claim about how the text works — not a list of observations.
- Is organised by idea, never line by line. A chronological walk through the text is the single most common structural weakness.
- Quotes briefly and often. Short embedded quotations, several per paragraph.
- Moves from device → effect → meaning every time. Never stops at the device.
- Uses tentative language: suggests, implies, invites the reader to. Literary claims are interpretations, and overclaiming reads as insensitive to the text.
Educerie · written from the published IB Diploma Programme structure for Language A: Literature, amended guide, first assessment 2026. Original text. Paper durations and mark totals checked against the May 2027 examination schedule. Last reviewed 5 September 2026.