Urgent IB Individual Oral Commentary in June

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Hi fellow IB students, I'm a junior in IB taking IB/AP Lang. & Comp. I really want to do well on my oral (A1?, I'm not sure what my oral is classified as, could anyone clear this up for me?) this June. The one where you have to discuss a selected poem from your assigned poet and an excerpt from a selected novel read in class. Honestly guys, how do you go about preparing/delivering. After they randomly select the poem, what do they ask you (describe the poem?, what's the theme?)- kind of vague-. How should I go about making a really strong organizing thought/statement for each poem/novel/text. And what are the steps I should go about when speaking? I know there really isn't an assigned way, but there is a typically implied method. Should I summarize the poem, talk about techniques, then connect with other pieces of literature? I urgently need your help. I want to do well, and I know you guys have either experienced this already or know much about it. Thank you so much in advance. I have one assigned poet/set of poems (Frost) and the choice between 2 novels (Macbeth/As I Lay Dying) if that helps.

[twilight]

What do you mean you don't know what your oral is classified as? I don't think the oral is classified as anything? It's just an oral exam.

They don't ask you anything. You can decide whatever you want to cover. They do give you guiding questions, but it's up to you on whether you want to answer those guiding questions or not. I never answered mine, and I don't think I even looked at it because I already knew what I wanted to cover. You can see the IOC to be similar to paper 1, where you just analyse whatever you want to.

If you get an extract from a novel, you need to contextualise that extract, like talk about the important events that had happened before this extract, and that had significance on the plot of this extract. For a poem, I gave about 30 seconds of the poet's background. After the contextualisation or background, then you can analyse your extract normally, like you usually would with a paper 1 essay. There is no need to connect with other pieces of literature. However, you need to connect it with the rest of the novel or poetry collection. I suppose your set of poems come from a certain collection? So you can draw parallel between the extract you got and the other poems in the collection. Like maybe they have similar themes, or similar message, or similar setting. For novel extract, you need to tie your extract to the rest of the novel. Other than contextualisation, you can cross refer to the rest of the novel. Like maybe in your extract character A says 'I hate you' to character B, then you can talk about how character A said the exact same thing in an earlier or later chapter, and so what does this show about character A or B.

[flinquinnster]

Hey! I'm not entirely sure about this, but from what you said I think that you're referring to the IOC for English A: Literature (also known as English A1) at Higher Level. In terms of that, I have some general tips.

Just in terms of timing and all that, if you're doing the assessment that I think you are, the poem will take up 8 minutes - you will have 20 minutes beforehand to prepare a speech. There will be a short 2-minute Q&A based on the poem. Then, there will be 10 minutes of questions on either of your 2 remaining texts, randomly chosen. For the Q&A, I don't have much advice except to make a list of potential questions that could come up, draft the points that you want to cover in your answer, and bully people (or friends who are also eager for practice!) into having regular question-and-answer discussions about your texts.

In terms of the main 8-minute talk on your poem, there is no set structure that you have to use. I would suggest having an introduction which is a summary of the poem, where you also briefly answer any guiding questions, and can also integrate the place of the poem in the broader collection and historical context of the poet - that should be around a minute long. Then, from there, what I personally did was split the poem into 2 themes, and proceeded to analyse as much of the poem as I could under those 2 themes. I would have sub-themes under each of the 2 themes. Then, I would have a very brief conclusion after the analysis, where I would also try and integrate my personal response. I personally wouldn't spend too long connecting it to other pieces of literature - it's not as clearly required and it eats up time you could spend in other ways. In the end, the structure is something that you should work on to suit your personal preferences - this is where practising IOCs comes in handy.

I would suggest that you attempt to figure out a structure for the 8-minute speech on every single possible extract you could be given. Depending on the size of your class, the IB English syllabus outlines the maximum number of extracts that can be used - e.g. my class had 8 extracts. So, what I did was plan the 8-minute speeches I would roughly give for each of the 8 poems. Then, I would just give myself 20 minutes to actually plan the speech in exam-like conditions, and then timed 8 minutes to give the speech. I ended up practising each of the 8 poems at least two or three times before my IOC came around. Whilst you by no means have to prepare that much, I think that doing more practice than not is useful, particularly if you are not confident as an impromptu speaker.