For Higher Level students, the fourth assessment component is the Higher Level essay. Former Literature students will know this as similar in concept to the Written Assignment and the World Literature essay before that: nothing more than a slightly longer piece of analysis. The trick, as always, is choosing the right topic.
The Agonies of Choice
You may have noticed through your IB Diploma courses, perhaps even in your Secondary education before that, that the great educational buzz-word of our era is that of student "choice". However, as any teacher of the IB Diploma would be able to tell you, and as you will find out in your forthcoming Internal Assessments, choice is not the great liberator but instead the greatest challenge you will face. 'Just give me a question and I'll answer it,' you'll find yourselves screaming into your pillow during yet another sleepless night. How do you choose a suitable topic for a 1500 word essay?
The answer is, naturally, with difficulty. You can and should expect a degree of support from your teacher, but even that relationship is fraught with challenges. A teacher can help but cannot give you the topic or question. If they model an example, you cannot use that. They can give you feedback on your choice - preferably before you start writing the essay - but it is ultimately for you to decide. In my experience, what is hardest is when students are adamant their first idea is a good one, but all I want to say is, 'Give it time. Think again. Come up with more ideas. Very soon you'll see for yourself why this is a bad idea!' It is always this way with internal assessments or practice examination essays written in term 1 of the course. Good students just cannot understand why it isn't a Level 7 (or even a 6) and argue vociferously for it to be raised. A year later they always say that they can't believe how bad they used to be!
From General to Specific
But I digress. Let's explore a real process that moves from general idea, to research, to identifying texts through which the thesis could be explored, to essay outline.
Imagine you enjoyed looking at advertising in the "language" part of the course - perhaps even how the traditional print media was and is, to some extent, just another arm of the advertising industry - and you wanted to expore how social change can be charted through its advertising. The nature of the family, gender roles and responsibilities, and more socially liberal attitudes to sex and nudity can all be seen in modern advertising compared to, for example, that of the 1950's. You would need to identify texts through which you can test your theory, just like in the Natural Sciences wherein an experiment is designed to test a hypothesis. After all, a large chunk of this essay is going to need to be direct analysis of a primary source to avoid it being too abstract and generalised. You would need some sort of academic or theoretical context to the argument, and then some key piece of additional information to make the conclusion hard-hitting and the research worthy of study.
Here's what one student came up with:
She took the topic of the advertising of smoking.
By using the control of the same company, she took an advertisement from 1950 and one from 1990 and performed a mini-commentary analysis on each, connecting choice of image, colour, and copy to the thematic meaning and message of the advertisement. Each commentary should be 300-400 words in length.
These mini-commentaries were then precursored by a short contextual analysis of the purpose of advertising (to sell the product), and some of the history of advertising (with examples of different methods of advertising including using cars to sell perfume and vice versa). This can be short (300-400 words) and is an opportunity to make embedded references to secondary sources and provide a short, evaluative literature review.
Along with a short introduction (150 words) and conclusion (150 words), she has her essay ready. The general theme of the advertisements is that, as social and health attitudes change regarding smoking, so the advertisements change accordingly. Naturally, one would think, as the health concerns became more prominent, Governments intervened and made regulations that the advertisements has to follow. So rather than cigarettes being symbolic of exciting lifestyles, they are instead equated with death and disease. A really good essay would also point out the limitations of this research, which is that the essay only proves the point as much as just two examples cherry-picked to support the point can ever do.
The killer point in the conclusion rested on the findings of this medical paper: Doll, R. & Hill, A. B. (1950). Smoking and carcinoma of the lung. British Medical Journal. September 30, 1950. London: British Medical Research Council. This student identified this well-known paper from 1950, and rightly asked the question as to why it took more than thirty years to have Government regulation regarding cigarette advertising. Her semi-rhetorical concluding question, then, was exactly whom do our Governments work for: the people, or the big businesses?
She took the topic of the advertising of smoking.
By using the control of the same company, she took an advertisement from 1950 and one from 1990 and performed a mini-commentary analysis on each, connecting choice of image, colour, and copy to the thematic meaning and message of the advertisement. Each commentary should be 300-400 words in length.
These mini-commentaries were then precursored by a short contextual analysis of the purpose of advertising (to sell the product), and some of the history of advertising (with examples of different methods of advertising including using cars to sell perfume and vice versa). This can be short (300-400 words) and is an opportunity to make embedded references to secondary sources and provide a short, evaluative literature review.
Along with a short introduction (150 words) and conclusion (150 words), she has her essay ready. The general theme of the advertisements is that, as social and health attitudes change regarding smoking, so the advertisements change accordingly. Naturally, one would think, as the health concerns became more prominent, Governments intervened and made regulations that the advertisements has to follow. So rather than cigarettes being symbolic of exciting lifestyles, they are instead equated with death and disease. A really good essay would also point out the limitations of this research, which is that the essay only proves the point as much as just two examples cherry-picked to support the point can ever do.
The killer point in the conclusion rested on the findings of this medical paper: Doll, R. & Hill, A. B. (1950). Smoking and carcinoma of the lung. British Medical Journal. September 30, 1950. London: British Medical Research Council. This student identified this well-known paper from 1950, and rightly asked the question as to why it took more than thirty years to have Government regulation regarding cigarette advertising. Her semi-rhetorical concluding question, then, was exactly whom do our Governments work for: the people, or the big businesses?
Now you try the same:
Take a general topic area you have been interested in.
Try to broaden the issue out, to include some of the ideas present in the Language & Literature course (for example: gender or racial bias in the language of television sports commentary).
Find a collection of secondary research on the topic, and then find a text or two that you can "test" the theory with, in terms of primary analysis.
Now plan the essay in terms of paragraphs and numbers of words.
Take a general topic area you have been interested in.
Try to broaden the issue out, to include some of the ideas present in the Language & Literature course (for example: gender or racial bias in the language of television sports commentary).
Find a collection of secondary research on the topic, and then find a text or two that you can "test" the theory with, in terms of primary analysis.
Now plan the essay in terms of paragraphs and numbers of words.
MY PROGRESS
How much of HL Essay - Choosing a Topic have you understood?
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