How to write the IB English Language & Literature Individual Oral

The Individual Oral is the spoken internal assessment in IB English A: Language and Literature, and it carries real weight in your final grade. Most students do not lose marks because their English is weak; they lose them because they pick a vague global issue, summarise their texts instead of analysing them, or let the literary text crowd out the non-literary one. This guide walks you through the whole task: what the IO is, how it is marked, exactly how to build and rehearse each part, and what separates a top-band oral from an average one.

The Language & Literature Individual Oral at a glance

The task is set by a single prompt: examine the ways in which one global issue of your choice is presented through one literary work and one non-literary body of work you have studied. You speak for ten minutes from a brief outline of up to ten bullet points — not a script — and then answer about five minutes of questions from your teacher. The oral is marked out of 40 across four equally weighted criteria. A non-literary body of work means a coherent run of texts from one maker or source: an advertising campaign, a politician's speeches, or a newspaper's coverage of an event, for example. You analyse a short extract from each text, but your knowledge of the wider work stands behind it.

How the Individual Oral is marked: the four criteria

Every mark comes from one of these four criteria, each worth 10. Build your oral criterion by criterion and check what each one actually rewards:

How to prepare a Language & Literature IO, step by step

1. Choose a specific global issue. Pick one precise, transnational issue from a field of inquiry. "The environment" is too broad; "how green marketing reframes individual consumers as the cause of, and cure for, climate damage" is the kind of focus that rewards close analysis.
2. Select one literary work and one non-literary body of work. Choose texts that both genuinely engage your issue — a literary work and, for instance, an advertising campaign, a politician's speeches or a newspaper's coverage — and pick one short extract from each to anchor the analysis.
3. Analyse how each maker's choices present the issue. Work through the literary writer's form and language, and the non-literary maker's rhetorical, visual and structural choices, always asking how the choice constructs meaning or positions an audience around the issue.
4. Build a balanced 10-point outline. Plan up to ten bullet points that give the two texts roughly equal time, signpost the structure, and end by connecting them through the global issue.
5. Rehearse to ten minutes. Practise speaking from the outline, not a script, until you land close to ten minutes in clear, accurate, register-appropriate English.
6. Prepare for the questions. Anticipate the five minutes of follow-up: be ready to extend a point, justify an interpretation, or draw a sharper connection between the two texts.

Individual Oral structure: what goes in each part

There is no single mandated running order, but the clearest structure that maps onto the criteria and the ten minutes is:

• The global issue — state it precisely and explain why it is significant and genuinely transnational.
• The literary extract — analyse how the writer's form, structure and language present the issue.
• The wider literary work — show how the extract connects to the work as a whole.
• The non-literary extract — analyse how rhetoric, image, layout, slogan and mode of address present the issue.
• The wider body of work — situate the extract within the campaign, speeches or coverage it comes from.
• The connection — draw the two texts together, comparing how each constructs the issue.
• A closing interpretation — a final, evaluative line on what the two texts together reveal about the issue.

What a strong vs weak Individual Oral looks like

The fastest way to lift your marks is to hear the difference. Here is the same material handled two ways.

The global issue

Analysing a non-literary text

Balancing the two texts

Common mistakes that cost marks

• A global issue that is really a theme. "Identity" or "war" is too broad to analyse closely — narrow it to a specific, transnational issue.
• Summarising instead of interpreting. Retelling the plot or describing the advert caps Criterion A; the examiner wants meaning, not recall.
• Describing content, not analysing technique. Naming what is in a text without showing how a choice creates an effect limits Criterion B.
• An unbalanced oral. Letting the literary text dominate leaves the non-literary text under-analysed and pulls down focus and organisation.
• Drifting off the global issue. Slipping into general appreciation of a text loses the thread the whole oral is built on.
• Reading a script. You may bring only a ten-point outline; a memorised script reads as stilted and risks breaching the rules.
• Running over or under time. Aim for ten minutes — rambling and rushing both cost focus and organisation marks.

Individual Oral — frequently asked questions

Guidance written by experienced IB English examiners and aligned to the current Language and Literature guide. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the International Baccalaureate Organization.