Unpack the question
Turn the wording into a job you can actually do. Keep the question in view as your interpretation develops.
Four things to mark
- The task: explain, explore, compare, discuss or evaluate. What kind of answer is required?
- The focus: a choice, relationship, idea, effect or change. Define ambiguous terms in relation to the text.
- What your answer must address: note the required texts or works, any particular part of a work, and words that narrow the task. For example, the question may ask you to compare two works or focus on their endings.
- The connection: how do choices shape meaning? Even a question about an idea needs attention to the writing.
Paper 1: a route into the text
A guiding question offers a focus for close analysis. Use it to select evidence and build a coherent interpretation, rather than treating it as a device hunt.
How do language and image work together to persuade the audience to quit smoking?
Original practice question for the CDC Becky advertisement.
Task
Explain how persuasion is constructed. Naming the message is not enough.
Focus
“Work together” requires a relationship. Examine what the picture makes visible in the headline’s idea of attachment.
Evidence
Connect the wording to the oxygen tubing, then test that interpretation against the offer of help. Explain the possible audience response without claiming everyone reacts identically.
Literary variation: “How does the speaker’s changing view of the woods create tension?” asks you to trace a development, explain the choices that construct it, and identify the tension. A list of images would leave the relationship unanswered.
Paper 2: a comparative argument
Paper 2 uses a comparative essay question, rather than the extract-specific guiding question of Paper 1. Choose works with enough relevant evidence to answer the whole question.
How, and to what effect, do two works you have studied present a tension between belonging and independence?
Original practice question, not a past examination item.
- “How”: look at voice, characterization, setting, structure and other choices that construct the tension.
- “To what effect”: explain the understanding each work develops through those choices.
- “Belonging and independence”: consider the relationship between them. An essay about loneliness alone may miss the question.
- “Two works”: establish points of comparison supported in both. Difference is often more useful than saying both contain the same theme.
A workable planning move: choose one pressure that makes belonging attractive or costly; collect a moment and an authorial choice from each work; explain the meaningful relationship. Repeat with a second point that develops the argument.
A warning sign: if your plan still works unchanged after replacing the question’s main terms, it may be a prepared essay with the question attached.
Unpack a new question
Original practice questions, not past IB exam questions. Notes stay with each question during this visit; the download includes only the current question.
Compare how two works you have studied use moments of silence to reveal conflict.
Opens your exercise in an editable form. Nothing is sent to AI until you request feedback.
IB English Guys · Paper 2 guidance ↗
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