What the exam asks
Every candidate answers the exact same fixed prompt for the individual oral. In our words, it asks you to:
examine how a global issue you choose is presented, through both content and form, in one literary work and one non-literary body of work from your course.
In the oral, your global issue is tested across the first three criteria (each out of 10 marks):
- Criterion A (Knowledge, understanding and interpretation): How persuasively you interpret the global issue within both extracts (up to 40 lines each) and across the wider literary work and non-literary body of work.
- Criterion B (Analysis and evaluation): How thoroughly you analyse and evaluate how both creators use content (what is included) and form (how it is constructed, including specific textual features and broader authorial choices) to present that exact issue.
- Criterion C (Focus and organization): How well you maintain a sustained focus on the global issue throughout the 10 minutes, giving roughly equal attention to both texts.
Core ideas
The three properties of a global issue
In IB English A: Language and Literature, a global issue is not simply “news from around the world” or a single historical event. According to the course guide, a valid global issue must have three properties:
- Significant on a wide scale: It matters to large numbers of people and affects human society broadly.
- Transnational: It crosses national borders rather than belonging to a single country’s law, politics, or history.
- Felt in everyday local contexts: Its impact is visible in ordinary daily life—in families, workplaces, schools, neighbourhoods, or personal relationships.
The five fields of inquiry: starting points, not issues
To help you brainstorm, the IB provides five broad fields of inquiry. They are starting points, not a complete list, and they often overlap. Never state a field of inquiry as your global issue; a field is a starting point that you must narrow into a specific, 10-minute focus.
| Field of inquiry | Too broad (a theme or topic) | Too narrow (local or historical only) | Specific global issue (10-minute ready) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Culture, identity and community | Migration and identity | The 1947 Partition of India | How second-generation immigrants navigate linguistic pressure to assimilate within the family home |
| Beliefs, values and education | Gender roles | Women’s voting laws in 1920s Britain | How traditional schooling reinforces rigid expectations of masculine emotional restraint |
| Politics, power and justice | State censorship | Banning a specific newspaper in one city | The use of bureaucratic language by authorities to mask state violence and silence dissent |
| Art, creativity and the imagination | Protest art | One museum exhibition in Paris | How visual satire challenges political apathy during public crises |
| Science, technology and the environment | Climate change | A 2024 flood in one valley | How corporate greenwashing (making a company look greener than it is) shifts responsibility for environmental degradation onto individual consumers |