Jump to content


  • Content Count

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Community Reputation

7 Recognised

Profile Information

  • Gender
  • Exams
    Nov 2014
  • Country

Recent Profile Visitors

835 profile views
  1. No problem, feel free to hit me up for any input on your queries or for guidance. I'm doing this mostly because I'm deathly bored and have nothing to do while I await the results of my application to university, so don't worry about taking up my time. You certainly seem to know what you're doing so keep trying!
  2. For English A, it's okay to work on a translated text as long as the other text was written in English. It's worth considering that certain literary devices will be off the table for analysis once you use a translated text however, such as diction. You'd also have to find for yourself whether certain analyses on things such as phrasing are valid, based on whether the translator reinterpreted any part of the text or rephrased things in certain places.
  3. Just a few concerns I have about your RQ: Would the length of the essay (4000 words) be enough for you to satisfactorily define the terms "absurdism", "satirise" and "subject matter"? Remember that a dictionary definition will likely be insufficient, you'll probably have to include textual references and explain why that passage is absurdist, how it is an example of satire, and you have to convince the marker what the "subject matter" of the two novels are. Furthermore, a novel will likely have multiple subject matters, and it will be up to you to decide whether you want to look at them all or sieve out one or two important ones. All while convincing the marker you've isolated this or that subject matter with good reason. The phrasing of your RQ could be interpreted as a necessarily "closed" question with exhaustive answers. There is a danger where you'll spend the essay listing the ways the authors satirise the subject matters in their novels, as strictly speaking, that's what your question is asking for when it says "In what ways..." The essay could leave the marker finishing with a feeling of, "so what?" You'll have spent the essay saying the author satirises the subject matter here, here and here, but it'll end there and not go any further. Overall, I can see you have some idea of what you want to talk about, but I would suggest some fine-tuning to your RQ such that it can make for a meaningful discussion and not result in a very Sparknotes-style list with examples of satire. I am also concerned that you might not be able to sufficiently cover the scope of your RQ within 4000 words. Some things to think about: What makes a text post-modern? What are some of the common (and different) characteristics of post-modern texts and what effects do they have on the reader? What is a unifying theme between the two novels you have chosen? Why is it worth looking at these two texts together rather than analyzing them separately? How does absurdism and satire work to bring out the post-modern qualities of the texts? Is it used to explore a certain subject matter in a way previously unthought of? I've attached my EE which was submitted for the Nov 2014 session (there's a shout-out to one of the novels you're using in the conclusion!) which might give an idea of how an essay could be structured. There's no single prescriptive, 'correct' way to structure an argument, so feel free to explore. It's not uncommon for you to go through several iterations and multiple ways of organization before finally settling on one that suits your RQ best. Good luck and most importantly have fun with your essay. I know I spent some very frustrating and very fulfilling moments working on mine and it's my proudest academic achievement in the IB despite being more of a science student and only doing English at an SL level. You'll do well to read loads of texts on the concepts you are examining like postmodern theory, absurdist theory etc. Some (many, in fact) of them will be aimed more at university-level readers but you'll slowly work your way up by digesting the entry-level materials before diving into more advanced stuff. Useful links: http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm An Introduction to Modern Literary Theory. Has a useful reference section for each of the concepts explored which you can use to research more about relevant concepts. http://plato.stanford.edu/ Like Wikipedia, but goes deep into philosophical topics. It holds articles on postmodernism and absurdism among others. Don't be intimidated if you cannot digest everything or even most things on the articles straight away, that's normal. Try to pick out small fragments, even sentences, that you feel might have some relevance to your analysis, and spend time unpacking the meaning and learning what every word in the complex-sounding jargon means. It's not uncommon to find very different interpretations/perspectives from different thinkers on the same concept. Theorists may disagree slightly and old theory can sometimes become outdated in the midst of newer thinking. ee public.docx
  4. Yes, as far as I remember essay questions on development economics almost always include diagrams from other sections, or none at all. Even document-based questions on development economics will tend to ask about concepts from other sections like micro/macroeconomics. A suitable diagram for your case could possibly be one which shows the change in aggregate supply/demand, depending on whether you are looking at long-term or short-term. You could draw a poverty cycle, but I don't recommend it as it's a very self-explanatory diagram and the amount of words you spend explaining it won't yield very much value, and explaining a diagram like the PPC or AD/AS would be more meaningful. PM me if you have any further questions, I'd be happy to help
  5. Remember that comparisons must include similarities. If the protagonists really are very different in the way the author treats them, then there's not much basis for comparison and your choosing of 3 novels will just seem like an attempt to fill up the 4000 words.
  6. I cannot give a sure answer, but I can tell you that the maximum word count for my Mandarin B SL written assignment is 480 words while the maximum for my rationale is 120 words. The guide states that the SL written assignment word limit is 400 for the task and 100 for the rationale, so I think the 1.2 ratio still applies. You could try asking your teacher or maybe submitting a question at https://ibanswers.ibo.org/app/ask (this may be a little unreliable as your written task is due in a few days) for a more reliable answer.
  8. English EE is one of the difficult ones to score an A in, so if you're not proficient and fluent with the language you shouldn't take it. You cannot afford to lose marks on rudimentary components like grammar, vocabulary when the higher-order criteria such as analysis are already quite difficult to attain.
  9. To answer your second question, transformation of curves may be very descriptive and there may not be enough room for exploration. An easy way to get an exploratory topic is to think of a real-world problem, such as modelling of traffic flow and stuff like that.
  10. Assuming you're counting in minutes, I think you'll have to eliminate 30 minutes from the 1440 minutes (24 hours) that is available for choosing for the second person who waits, and eliminate another 30 minutes for the next person and so on seeing how you cannot have them share a single minute in the same place X. I'm not about to calculate everything or derive a formula for you, but this probably means you can only have a maximum of 48 people until they start meeting each other.
  11. A problem you're going to have to solve is the ambiguity as to how and what literary features contribute to literary merit, and it's likely that there may be trouble coming up with a convincing measure of literary excellence.
  12. You're bordering on a TOK discussion with what defines the greatness of a literary piece, something like this is extremely subjective as people have differing responses to the same piece of text, and it'll be difficult to perform adequate research on the literary work and distinguish literary merit from commercial success. I strongly suggest you stick more to a more literature-based comparison/analysis for your EE.
  13. A helpful guide is to take a look at the assessment rubrics and see how your analysis addresses the criteria stated. For example, for understanding of text try to look for cases where an examiner would find reason to believe you understood the poem, which would be largely through appropriate quotes of the poem and how the part quoted achieves a certain effect on the reader, and just move along for there.
  14. A simple way to get started is to simply Google news articles with keywords such as "shortage", "surplus" etc. to get articles suitable to do a commentary on. Remember to find one with proposed solutions while also giving enough space for synthesis and evaluation of the solutions stated and also some solutions of your own.
  15. You may have entered in your methodologies wrongly as both methods A and B seem to be the same, but nonetheless the one with more hydrogen carbonate should display a larger increase in height of oxygen and subsequently rate of photosynthesis as more CO2 is available to be fed into the Calvin cycle to convert NADPH and ATP back into NADP+ and ADP which will be used in the light dependent reaction. The light dependent reaction involves the splitting of water to produce O2 as a product which is what is measured in your experiment. Basically what you can do is plot a scatter plot of the height of the oxygen bubble across time and find the best-fit line across all points, of which the gradient will be taken as a measure of rate of photosynthesis.
  • Create New...

Important Information
