Preview
IB DP English A: Language and Literature | SL & HL | Assessment & Exam Skills | Paper 1: Guided Textual Analysis
📋 What You Will Learn
- State the precise IB definition of the guiding question and understand what it signals to the examiner about your analysis
- Decode the anatomy of any guiding question by identifying its technical/formal element, its action verb, and its implied scope
- Apply a step-by-step unpacking method to at least two different text types, translating the question into a workable analytical agenda
- Explain the "lens, not cage" principle — how the guiding question directs without narrowing a full, criterion-covering response
- Describe when and how to propose your own alternative focus , and the risks of doing so under time pressure
- Integrate the guiding question into your annotation, planning and opening paragraph so that criteria A, B, C and D are all served from the outset
🔍 Guiding Question If the guiding question already names the formal element you should analyse, why do so many students still ignore it — and what do high-scoring candidates actually do with it in the first five minutes of the exam?
🌍 Why This Matters The guiding question is the first text you read in the Paper 1 exam — before the unseen passage itself. At SL you have 75 minutes (plus 5 minutes of reading time) and 20 marks riding on one analysis. As the IB course guide puts it, the guiding question explores a "central technical or formal element that may provide an interesting point of entry into the text." Candidates who spend 30 seconds really reading that sentence begin their annotations with a direction; candidates who skim past it drift through the text collecting random observations, and then struggle to satisfy criterion C (Focus & organisation). This note gives you the system that separates the two groups.
1 · What Is the Guiding Question?
📖 Definition — Guiding Question The guiding question is a single question printed beneath the unseen text on the Paper 1 exam. It identifies a central technical or formal element — a specific feature of language, structure, style or visual design — that the IB considers a productive entry point into that particular text. You are invited to use it to focus your analysis; you may also propose an alternative focus of your own.
Three things follow immediately