English B subject report · May 2009

May 2009 extended essay reports Page 1 © International Baccalaureate Organization 2009 ENGLISH B Overall grade boundaries Grade: E D C B A Mark range: 0 - 7 8 - 15 16 - 22 23 - 28 29 - 36 The range and suitability of the work submitted The new criteria in many cases seem to have clarified many of the grey areas inherent in the former guide. The subject matter this session covered a wide range of topics, yet Category 3 literary topics seemed the slightly more popular choice. Marks represented the full range from excellent to elementary, though overall there were far fewer essays of “ elementary standard” than in past sessions. There are still, however, a fair number of inappropriate topics being submitted, which severely limits mark awards. The academic register of the majority of essays was generally quite appropriate. Nonetheless, th ere is still a tendency for candidates who take on topics for which they are particularly enthusiastic to sometimes confuse their passion and an informal personal style for academic rigour. There were few pure Category 1 essays submitted. The most successf ul of these focused purposefully on a particular language use like a comparison of rhetoric in a pair of speeches, or an analysis of feminist language in teen magazines to give just two examples. Linguistic studies on the whole could be better exploited. Category 2 essays varied in quality often depending on how clearly these aligned with the descriptions provided in the Extended e ssay Guide . Category 2a essays, though not particularly popular, i.e. socio -cultural in nature with an impact on the language, tended to be broad in approach and often lacked emphasis on the impact of the language. Surveys to determine the nature of language use were rarely successful due to broad even irrelevant question design and the lack of adequate socio -linguistic analysis. In this subject area some candidates chose to study the impact of English on the candidate’s native language in various ways. This is often a difficult approach to organize properly. The most successful of these tended to be very focused on specific lang uage elements and gave proper emphasis