English Literature HL or English Language Literature HL

I took Eng A Lang...personally if I could choose again, I'd choose Eng A Lit. The texts for Eng Lit are easier to analyze IMO

did you get an A* in lit or language? Literature is basically analyzing texts, so you might find it hard without knowledge of literary device terms. If you're uncertain, Lang and Lit offers both language and literature so you don't really lose anything picking it. I guess it's only a problem if someone is uncertain whether they will do well with the Language part of the course.

I can't really say much about Language and Literature, but as a student currently doing HL Literature:

- Lit is about the analysis of texts. 13 of them. Don't do lit if you hate reading. You might be able to get by on Sparknotes, but you probably won't ace the course.

- My classes are generally "sit down, talk about lit. stare at passages and voice close reading analyses on them".

- The most important skill is probably the ability to pick apart themes, metaphors, and symbols. Things like that. What things mean, what the underlying meaning is, what the general idea and motifs in the passage are... Stuff like "rhythm does this___, the use of the second person POV contributes to this___, the use of oxymoron enhances___" is a skill you'll pick up eventually, and isn't that hard. Close reading though. Everything has meaning (and you've never realised it until you took lit class and now ascribing meaning to everything is an occupational hazard.)

- I believe that the most important thing about Literature isn't the "creative writing and descriptives" bit because god knows how uh, useless they can be. Sure, being creative in lit is nice, you'll come up with dramatic thesis statements and interesting points that your peers may not mention, but at the end of the day, it's the clearness and conciseness of the essay writing that matters. I read the essay I wrote early last year and god damn that was a bad piece. You'll learn how to "signpost things more clearly!!!", write proper & great thesis statements (that your entire essay should revolve around!!) and basically communicate your ideas such that they flow nicely and your examiner won't have to reread the sentences to understand what they mean.

- By your second year of Lit HL you'll probably have to do a lit commentary verbally. Eww, I know. Both Langlit and Lit requires this (IOC), but I daresay that the Lit HL kids have it harder. For instance, our poems are a tad more "incomprehensible at the first glance".

- I like Lit HL because it involves a lot of discussion about ethical real life issues. Which is fun. I also love how I get to stage arguments in class sometimes about various perspectives that one may employ when looking at some text or other. If you base my morals off lit class, I'd be a very dubious character.


CONS of Lit HL:
- "oh my god i just spent the entire night writing this essay help me where is my coffee"

- your IB career revolves around the next lit essay like oh my god why do we have so many of them?? (13 texts!!): I asked my teacher and she said the 1200-1500 word essays should take, typically, at least 4 hours to write. That doesn't actually include the planning time. Or the time it takes to find a good thesis statement.

- (okay the above is teacher dependent, but if your teacher wants you to write them essays... my cousin's class didn't get an essay for each book. my class did. 13 essays multiplied by two because there are drafts. fun.)



Okay, I do suppose I know what the langlit kids do, but quite essentially,
- they place more emphasis on the use of devices than we do when they analyse literary texts. I've seen their handouts and was just like ???

- They don't just do analysis of lit texts, obviously. Lots of media fliers and stuff like that.

- More directly pertinent to real life??


(I would probably advise that you take langlit if you don't take english lit currently, but then again I can be wrong and you may do better/enjoy lit more.)

Could you give an example of one of the texts that you've analysed (in lang). I could compare to one of the lit texts.