Preview
Managing Time Across Both Texts HL
IB DP English A: Language and Literature | SL & HL | Assessment & Exam Skills | Paper 1: Guided Textual Analysis (HL — two texts)
📋 What You Will Learn
- State the exact HL Paper 1 time structure (135 writing minutes, two separate analyses each worth /20) and explain why the IB requires balance between the two
- Build and apply a worked minute-by-minute time budget allocating survey, annotation, planning and writing for each text
- Distinguish productive planning time from drafting time, and practise the "minimum viable plan" that takes five to seven minutes and saves thirty
- Identify the precise decision points at which you must stop writing Text 1 regardless of how much more you feel you could say
- Analyse why Text 2 performance commonly drops, and apply strategies — front-loaded annotation, targeted word-count aims, planned transitions — to sustain quality under fatigue
- Connect time discipline directly to Criteria C (Focus & organisation) and D (Language), recognising that rushed prose and abandoned structure are marking penalties, not just presentational flaws
🔍 Guiding Question If you could write a brilliant analysis of Text 1 given unlimited time, why does the HL examiner not reward you for it alone — and what does this reveal about what "managing both texts" truly demands of you?
🌍 Why This Matters As Brad Philpot's Cambridge course companion states plainly, HL students have 2 hours and 15 minutes to write two analyses, one on each of the texts — and the assessment criteria are applied separately to each, meaning Text 1 and Text 2 are each marked out of 20. Leave Text 2 a half-page of rushed bullet points, and you have sacrificed up to 15 marks before the examiner finishes reading. The 2015 IB Language and Literature Guide goes further, specifying that "the analysis between the two texts must be balanced" — so time equity is not merely good advice, it is a marking expectation baked into the criteria. Knowing when to move on is as much an analytical skill as knowing what to write.
1 · The HL Paper 1 Landscape HL
📖 Definition