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Paper 1: Literary Commentary

Paper 1 contains two previously unseen passages and students are instructed to write a literary commentary on one of the passages.

One will be poetry, the other will be taken from works such as:

  • a novel or short story

  • an essay

  • a biography

  • a journalistic piece of literary merit

IB Paper 1 past papers and responses

Paper 1: your prose/poem analysis 

2006 - Prisoner's Dilemma - Mr Walker's annotations

May 2014 - HL Paper 1

May 2014 - Poetry level 4 example

May 2014 - Prose level 6 example

May 2014 - Prose level 7 example

May 2014 - Poetry level 7 example

May 2015 Paper 1

Nov 2012 SL Paper 1

May 2013 SL Paper 1

May 2012 SL Paper 1

Nov 2013 SL Paper 1

Analysing Unseen Prose

Writing analytically

Eileen extract - Stephanie

Balzac extract - Megha

Prose analysis task

Midnight's Children - Will

The Reality Boy extract - Harune

The Sellout extract - Zoe

Life of Pi extract - Jatin

Desert extract - Katrina

Long Day's Journey extract - Jeff

Lies we tell ourselves -

Denise

Streetcar Named Desire -

Nitish

Life of Pi extract - Derrick

I am Cat extract - Felix

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Rian

Bringing up the Bodies - Serene

May 2015 Marking comments

May 2015 poetry response

Paper 1 SL Mock exam 2018 - marking notes

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