You bet it is. Your response to the question you select should look like an essay and read like an essay. That means, for example, it should have an introduction that includes a thesis (i.e. a main argument or arguments), a body that includes supporting evidence from the literary works you refer to, and a synthesis or conclusion that revisits your thesis in light of the arguments you have made in the main body of your essay. You should build your ideas or argument, and you also have to write in appropriately formal, ‘academic’ language.

You do the Paper 2 exam at the end of your course of study. For schools registered for northern hemisphere exams this is in the May of the final year of your study. For schools registered for southern hemisphere exams this is in the November of the final year of your study.

35% at SL.

25% at HL.

1 hour 45 minutes. The exam is identical for SL and HL students.

There are four marking criteria as follows:

A. Knowledge, understanding and interpretation (10 marks)

B. Analysis and evaluation (10 marks)

C. Focus and organization (5 marks)

D. Language (5 marks)

Stating the obvious, there are twice as many marks for criteria A and B as there are for criteria C and D. Students sometimes worry that they are ‘not very good at writing English’. While you will receive more marks in criterion D if you ‘write well’, criteria A and B are not really dependent on language. If you can express your ideas with adequate clarity and accuracy, you can still achieve excellent marks on this paper. That is, we think, worth thinking about.

There will always be four questions. You must answer only one question. Use your ‘reading time’ – 5 minutes before the exam begins – to consider the questions carefully. As the exam begins, unpack what the questions are asking you to do – sometimes it is more than one thing – and decide which question you intend to answer and which two literary works you have studied will illustrate your answer. Once you have made your decision, do not change your mind.

You should write about two of the literary works you have studied during your course of study.

You may not write about the literary work you used for your individual oral. This means, for example, if you read the short stories of Anton Chekov and based your individual oral on this work, you may not write about any of his short stories in your Paper 2 exam.

If you are an HL student, and if you wrote about one of the literary works you have studied in your HL Essay, you may not write about this work again in your Paper 2 exam.

With the exception of the literary work you discussed in your individual oral and (for HL students only) any literary work you studied in your HL Essay, you may write about any other literary work you have studied on your course in your Paper 2 essay (remembering to limit your choice to two works). The choice is your own. It is not the choice of your teacher.

Yes, you must compare and contrast. Comparing and contrasting are essential and are marked in criteria A and B. This means that, as you respond to the question you have chosen, you must compare and contrast the two works you have decided to write about. You must compare and contrast, depending on the question, at the level of ideas (e.g. themes, characters, setting etc.) and at the level of literary representation (e.g. structure, symbols, narrative perspective etc.).

No. Here, comparing means to find similarities, whereas contrasting means to find differences. You must do both.

You are advised to revise three works and use two of these in your exam response. Some works are ‘better’ for some questions than others. If you revise only two works you will almost certainly be disadvantaged in your exam. Examiners frequently highlight how students respond to questions using poorly chosen works to illustrate their answer. Those responses tend not to achieve very high marks.

The answer to this question depends on what you mean by ‘enough’ and ‘desirable’. For some students, writing a five-paragraph essay is an organising structure that helps them to plan and write, and it can be a useful strategy for some students. However, it is unlikely, in most circumstances, that a five-paragraph essay will receive very high marks. Experience shows that such essays typically lack the level of detailed sophistication that (often) longer, more organically developed essays tend to have. We are not, then, suggesting that you cannot or must not write a five-paragraph essay, but we do not recommend such an approach if you are aiming for higher marks (that are likely to constitute a grade of 6 or 7).

An excellent question, but one that is difficult to answer. We can, however, say something rather than nothing. Hundreds of words of random rubbish are exactly that: random rubbish. Thus, whatever you write, must simultaneously address the question you have selected, and show understanding of both works you are writing about, in more or less equal measure, and with appropriate comparison and contrast. To do this well will require anywhere between 800-1800 words. Most very good or excellent essays will exceed 800 words – 1000-1300 words is a rough estimate – and exceeding 1600 words is difficult for most students while continuing to write well.

No. In addition, poorly chosen quotations do not add value to an essay. Nevertheless, pithy, well-chosen quotations can be value-adding, and there is a sense in which responses that are illustrated with a range of appropriate quotations can enhance a student’s work, showing an awareness of the question and the literary works. While we recommend that you aim to include quotations, they are not explicitly mentioned in the marking criteria.

This is a good question, and one without a precise answer. Often, students leave exams expressing anxiety that they left too little time for writing, having spent too much time planning. Don’t be one of those students. You must select a question (a process that begins in your five-minutes ‘reading time’). You must ‘unpack’ the question to ensure you really know what is being asked of you. You need to select two appropriate literary works to use in illustrating your response, and you need to find some significant points of comparison and contrast. In addition, you need to have a thesis – a position, or argument that your essay will develop. You can do all of this in about twenty minutes, give or take. We cannot be more exact, and there will be some variation between students. Nevertheless, this approach allows about seventy-five to eighty minutes to write your essay and a further ten minutes to check your response for any glaring errors. You can, of course, do things differently if you choose, but recognise that there are pros and cons in doing so. Listen to the advice of your teacher, but remember that she or he is not doing the exam.

Yes, your essay must be focused and respond to the question you have selected. A thesis is a statement that establishes how you will respond to the question and what your main argument(s) will be. An essay without a thesis is rather like a rudderless boat. Your introduction sets up and 'maps out' the rest of your essay.

Yes. This said, the word ‘conclusion’ suggests that you have the final word on something, and there is nothing more to say. This isn’t true, and it is a little arrogant to suggest otherwise. Also, many students finish their essays by pithily repeating what they have already said – both dull and unnecessary. For these reasons, we prefer the word ‘synthesis’ rather than ‘conclusion’. A synthesis, like a conclusion, involves bringing together the parts of a discussion. However, it is also evaluative, and it involves considering the wider implications of your argument. On out website, we show you how to write a winning synthesis.

This is a question that divides teachers. We take the view that knowing terminology is not an end in itself and it is not the same thing as understanding a literary work. That said, we do think that using terminology to show how literature works is essential, and without this ‘shorthand’ it is actually quite difficult to write about literature. In the same way that biologists convey ideas through mutually understood terms such as ‘cell’, it is much easier when writing about literature to call the ‘setting’ of a work exactly that. On our website, we help develop your repertoire of terminology and guide you in using it in meaningful ways for exam success.

These are difficult questions to answer. Most students write about novels and/or plays. Fewer students write about short stories or poems. Students, often, struggle to write effectively about short stories and poems. In part, this is because they find it difficult to establish a sense of balance; that is, they do not know how many short stories or poems to write about, and their essays become ‘uneven’. However, some students do write very well about short stories and poems, and this makes it difficult to reach a firm conclusion on the issue. If you do write about short stories and/or poems, it is generally better to write about a number of short stories or poems rather than just one or two. Even, here, however, we need to qualify what we write. That is, if the short stories and poems are long, it is less necessary to write about several of them. When you write about a novel or play, you just don’t have to think about these things!

If you are asking this question at all, it probably indicates that you have a good sense of the task of writing a Paper 2 and at least a fair understanding of the marking criteria. It is probably the case that it doesn’t matter much whether works are of the same or different genres and/or you include works in translation. Nevertheless, keep in mind that you have to compare and contrast and that this is assessed in both criteria A and B. If, say, you select works of different genres, you are building in an element of difference, but you still have to ‘exploit’ the difference in your response to the question you have chosen.