Found a global issue you like?
Take it straight into the free Literature IO frame. The planning sections are free; the later sections are a one-time unlock that builds your two-work analysis and the 10-point outline you speak from into one export-ready document.
Start this IO in the Literature frame →FIELD 1 — CULTURE, IDENTITY & COMMUNITY
Issues about how belonging, displacement and the self are shaped — rich for comparing a work in your language with one in translation.
1 · How surveillance reshapes the experience of private identity.
Specific (it names what surveillance does to the self, not just "surveillance"), plainly transnational, and analysable through form — narrative voice, free indirect discourse and the policing of the gaze.
2 · The cost of assimilation and the loss of a mother tongue for migrant communities.
A genuinely transnational migrant experience narrowed to a precise tension — naming, language and belonging — that you can read in dialogue, code-switching and symbolic naming.
3 · How communities enforce conformity by shaming the outsider.
Specific and analysable through narrative perspective and the rhetoric of the crowd; the outsider figure is a transnational literary preoccupation rather than a single plot.
4 · The way a colonial language fractures a character's sense of self.
Pins the broad subject of colonialism to one analysable effect — divided identity — that lives in diction, proverb and the clash of registers in the text.
FIELD 2 — BELIEFS, VALUES & EDUCATION
Issues about how belief systems, moral codes and schooling form — and deform — the individual.
5 · How religious doctrine is used to police women's freedom.
Specific (it isolates how doctrine becomes control), transnational, and readable through the manipulation of scripture, euphemism and ritualised language.
6 · The way education reproduces, rather than dismantles, social class.
A precise sociological issue with wide reach, analysable through narrative arc, irony and the shame of social ascent — well above a generic "growing up" reading.
7 · How inherited guilt is passed between generations.
Narrow and analysable through dramatic structure, motif and confessional voice; the transmission of guilt is a transnational moral preoccupation, not a single family's plot.
8 · The clash between individual conscience and collective dogma.
Specific and transnational; you can analyse it through soliloquy, free indirect thought and the rhetoric of the trial or the confession.
Ready to build the analysis?
The Literature IO frame walks you through every criterion — defining the issue, choosing extracts, analysing authorial choices and balancing the two works — and the paid unlock assembles your prep notes and the 10-point outline into one export-ready document.
Open the Literature IO frame →FIELD 3 — POLITICS, POWER & JUSTICE
Issues about authority, oppression and the law — among the most reliably analysable for the IO.
9 · How language is weaponised by the state to control thought.
A precise mechanism of power (not just "totalitarianism"), transnational, and almost tailor-made for close analysis of diction, neologism and syntax.
10 · The moral compromise of the individual under a totalitarian regime.
Narrows oppression to the inner life — complicity and survival — which you read through narratorial irony, structure and shifts in point of view.
11 · How the justice system fails those it claims to protect.
Specific and transnational; analysable through the courtroom set-piece, dramatic irony and the gap between procedure and fairness.
12 · The silencing of dissent and the cost of speaking out.
A precise civic issue with global resonance, readable through voice, silence as a structural device and the rhetoric of resistance.
FIELD 4 — ART, CREATIVITY & THE IMAGINATION
Issues about the maker, the made thing and the imagination's power — strong for poetry and metafiction.
13 · The tension between artistic freedom and political censorship.
Specific and transnational; the act of making art under constraint is dramatised in the text itself, so form and content fuse for analysis.
14 · How storytelling is used to survive trauma.
Narrows the imagination to one function — testimony — that you read through metafictional framing, fragmented structure and unreliable narration.
15 · The way the imagination both consoles and deceives.
Specific and transnational; analysable through dramatic illusion, symbolism and the ironic distance between fantasy and reality.
16 · How the poet reclaims a marginalised voice through form.
A precise issue ideal for poetry, where the ~40-line extract is a whole poem or two; read through persona, line-break, register and reclaimed myth.
FIELD 5 — SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT
Issues about progress, the limits of knowledge and humanity's relationship with the natural world.
17 · How technological progress erodes what it means to be human.
Specific (it names the human cost of progress), plainly transnational, and analysable through tone, the uncanny and a deliberately flattened narrative voice.
18 · The hubris of the scientist who oversteps the limits of knowledge.
A precise and ancient-yet-transnational issue, readable through framing narrative, the rhetoric of ambition and the symbolism of creation and ruin.
19 · How environmental collapse exposes social inequality.
Narrows ecology to who suffers first and most — a transnational justice angle read through symbol, setting and collective narration.
20 · The estrangement of the individual in the industrialised city.
Specific and transnational; the modern city as alienating force is analysable through fragmentation, imagery and the grotesque.
CROSS-FIELD — VERSATILE ISSUES THAT TRAVEL
Issues that fit more than one field; choose the field your two works most clearly support.
21 · How war is remembered and mythologised long after it ends.
Avoids the trap of "war" by isolating memory and myth-making — a specific, transnational issue analysable through elegy, irony and propaganda's language.
22 · How female desire is constrained by a patriarchal society.
Specific and transnational; analysable through free indirect discourse, symbolism and the gap between what a heroine wants and what she may say.
23 · The dehumanising machinery of bureaucracy.
Narrows power to its faceless administrative form — a transnational modern condition read through absurdist tone, circular logic and structure.
24 · How grief is shaped by the culture that surrounds the mourner.
A universal experience made specific by its cultural framing — transnational and analysable through ritual, narrative time and communal voice.
From a global issue to a top-band IO
A good global issue is the easy part — the marks are in how you examine it. The Individual Oral is scored out of 40 across four criteria, each /10: A Knowledge, understanding & interpretation, B Analysis & evaluation, C Focus & organization and D Language. Whichever issue you pick, the same moves win: define the issue precisely, choose a ~40-line extract from each of two works (one in your language, one in translation) that genuinely represents the whole text, analyse the authorial choices in form and language that present it — not just what happens — keep the two works in balance, and connect them into one persuasive interpretation you can speak from a 10-point outline.
Build your chosen global issue into a full IO
The examiner-written Literature IO frame takes you through every section with the rubric, worked examples and the traps that cost marks. The planning sections are free — unlock the later sections to finish the whole oral and export your notes and 10-point outline to Word or PDF.
Open the Literature IO frame →Literature IO global issue ideas — FAQ
What makes a strong global issue for the Individual Oral?
It is specific rather than a broad theme like "war" or "love", is of genuine transnational significance (reaching beyond one country or text), fits one of the five fields of inquiry, and can be examined closely through ~40-line extracts of two works in ten minutes. Name what is at stake — not "surveillance" but "how surveillance reshapes private identity".
What are the five fields of inquiry?
Culture, identity and community; beliefs, values and education; politics, power and justice; art, creativity and the imagination; and science, technology and the environment. Your global issue should sit clearly within one of them, which keeps it focused and transnational.
How do I choose my two works and the ~40-line extracts?
You examine the issue through an extract of about 40 lines from each of two works — one originally written in the language you study and one in translation. Pick works that both develop the issue substantially, and choose an extract from each that genuinely represents how its whole work presents it, so you can analyse authorial choices and connect them to the wider text.
Can I just copy one of these global issues?
Use them as a launchpad, but make the oral your own: sharpen the wording to fit your two works, choose your own extracts, and develop your own interpretation. That ownership is exactly what the Knowledge and Analysis criteria reward — build it section by section in the free Literature IO frame.
Ideas for other English & IB assessments
Literature HL Essay → Language & Literature IO → Literature Paper 1 → All 37 IA tools →
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