How you are marked: assessment objectives, criteria and command terms

What the exam asks

You are never tested on the rules of the markscheme directly, but every question you read and every mark you earn is built from them:

• Paper 1 gives you two unseen non-literary passages, each with a guiding question (you may follow it or choose your own focus on a technical or formal feature). At SL you analyse one passage; at HL you analyse both, separately. Each analysis is marked out of 20 across Criteria A, B, C and D.
• Paper 2 gives you four general essay questions, often led by IB command terms; you answer one, and your comparative essay is marked out of 25 across Criteria A, B1, B2, C and D.
• The individual oral and the HL essay use the exact same A–D criterion pattern, scaled to 40 marks and 20 marks respectively.

Core ideas

The three assessment objectives (AO1–AO3)

The IB sets three assessment objectives (the skills the course tests) for both SL and HL (there are no HL-only objectives). In this course we label them AO1, AO2 and AO3 to match their order in the guide, and the marking criteria (the separate scales your work is marked on) mirror them directly:

1. Know, understand and interpret (AO1 $\rightarrow$ Criterion A): Show accurate knowledge of the text or work, understand what it says literally, and interpret what it implies beneath the surface in its context.
2. Analyse and evaluate (AO2 $\rightarrow$ Criterion B): Analyse how the writer’s or creator’s choices of language, image, structure and form construct meaning, and evaluate how effectively those choices work (and, in Paper 2, how the two works compare).
3. Communicate (AO3 $\rightarrow$ Criteria C and D): Organize a focused, well-developed, balanced argument (Criterion C) in clear, precise, formal English (Criterion D).

Criteria and marks across every component

Every component follows the A–B–C–D spine. From the 2026 guide onwards, Paper 2 is marked out of 25: Criterion A fell from 10 marks to 5, and Criterion B (still 10 marks) is split into B1 (analysis and evaluation of textual features and/or authorial choices, 5 marks) and B2 (comparative analysis, 5 marks). Papers from 2021 to 2025 were marked out of 30.

How best-fit marking and level progression work

Examiners (and, for the individual oral, your teacher) mark each criterion independently using best fit:

• They read your whole response and pick the level descriptor (1 to 5 in written work; two-mark bands up to 10 in the oral) that best matches your overall performance in that criterion.
• A single flaw is not penalized twice: a weak structure lowers Criterion C, not Criterion A or B, unless it stops you making sense.
• Top band does not mean flawless: a 5 out of 5 rewards work that is persuasive, insightful and convincing, not perfection.