Preview
IB DP English A: Language and Literature | SL & HL | Assessment & Exam Skills | Paper 2: Comparative Essay
📋 What You Will Learn
- State the eligibility rules governing which literary works you may use for Paper 2, and identify which texts are excluded because of the IO or HL Essay
- Explain why a pairing must offer both comparability and contrast , and why this distinction determines the quality of your comparative essay
- Evaluate what it means for a pairing to be "flexible" — capable of yielding a strong essay against any of the four general Paper 2 questions
- Apply a structured framework to assess whether two works make a strong or a weak pairing, using worked examples of both
- Build a strategic preparation plan: pre-selecting three works, constructing comparison matrices, and selecting key moments for close study
- Produce a comparative thesis and integrated topic sentences that demonstrate overt, sustained comparison across both works
🔍 Guiding Question If you may choose any two of your studied literary works for Paper 2, what principles should guide that choice — and how can you ensure that, whatever question appears on the paper, your pairing will unlock a perceptive, analytical response?
🌍 Why This Matters Paper 2 is the component where you exercise the most strategic control. As Stancar and Pierce ( Prepare for Success , Hodder 2021) observe, "a good match between these two choices can mean the difference between a strong essay and a weak one." Unlike Paper 1, where the text is unknown, your works are fixed in advance — which means a poorly chosen pairing is a self-inflicted wound. This note teaches you to choose deliberately and prepare rigorously so that you walk into the exam room with two works that want to be compared and an essay that is already half-formed in your mind.
1 · Paper 2 at a Glance — The Task and Its Demands
📖 Definition — Comparative Essay (Paper 2) Paper 2 is a timed comparative essay in which you answer one of four general questions by comparing two of the literary works you have studied during the course. You have 1 hour 45 minutes . You have no access to the texts during the exam. Both SL and HL students receive the same paper and are marked against the same four criteria.
Paper 2 is worth 35% of your final grade at SL and 25% at HL (the lower HL weighting reflects the addition of the HL Essay). As Brad Philpot's Cambridge course companion notes, the exam "includes four unseen essay questions, of which you will answer one by comparing two of your literary texts." The word unseen refers to the questions, not the texts: you know your texts inside out, but you cannot predict which question you will face. This asymmetry — known texts, unknown questions — is the structural heart of Paper 2 and the reason why work selection must