SL Literature without doing IGCSE Literature?

Hi pbunny,

My situation is very similar to yours - I didn't do English Lit at GCSE and got an A* in IGCSE English language. Despite this I'm now in IB1 and am doing HL English Literature (and scored a level 6 this term, woohoo!). There are also two other students in my class who haven't done English lit GCSE and are coping with IB Lit just fine. So, my advice to you would be to do SL English Lit if that's what you want to do - you're clearly intelligent and have a knack for English to have been predicted an A* at IGCSE - go for it! Don't let your lack of Lit GCSE hold you back

Also, depending on what areas you're thinking of going into at university, you might even want to consider doing HL English Lit - according to my two IB English teachers it is one of the easier highers.

I'm glad I could help! If you have any other questions about IB, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to provide advice

To be honest I don't know, my college only offers literature for IB so I can't really make a comparison. Having said that, it would make sense if lang/lit were slightly easier than lit, or at least less academically rigorous.

I did IGCSE Literature and IGCSE Language and got A* in both. Tbh, it makes little difference since the way of writing is so different. I have an awful teacher but I really struggled in IB despite doing well in IGCSE.

Also, about lang/lit vs lit, my friends who do lang/lit mostly look at the lit papers and thank god they chose lang/lit

Thanks for the reply. Is lang/lit that much easier than lit? I'm trying to take the english class that will reduce my workload because i have hard HL subjects.

P.S do you have any experience with IB psychology or know anything about it? Need to decide whether i should take psych higher level over economics. I find psychology A LOT more interesting than economics (do it at IGCSE, regret taking it SO much!). Plus psychology matches really well with my higher levels of biology/chemistry and would be much more appropriate for medicine or any healthcare profession. Here the thing though, i've been told economics is much easier statistically to get a 6/7 in....Please help me decide

Well, I do Lit and though I do believe it's largely my teacher's fault that I hate it so much, frankly I do. I saw the lang/lit mocks and they were analysing a picture?? So I guess if you are a more creative person then you would enjoy lang/lit more. That said, I also believe the rule of thumb is if you don't need HL Lit for university (if you are, for example, doing a science course) then don't take it. The teachers say it's not worth risking your overall. (also, you read a lot of useless books in Lit js)

And I actually do HL Psychology so lucky you haha. I really love psychology, I've decided to do it at uni. If you're going to do a science based course at university in the UK, I believe that some consider psych to be a science, and that would give you three science higher levels! Yay! So if that's what you're aiming for, yes I would suggest you take psych over econ.

For what it's worth, my friends who do econ really enjoy it and I think the memorisation work is about the same in both subjects. Econ is much more mathematical and psych is more scientific. Psych essays are kind of like history essays in terms of writing style and depth. But IGCSE economics is, I've heard, very very easy compared to IB so if you didn't enjoy econ at IGCSE, then you probably won't at IB. Umm and I don't know what the grade boundaries for econ are like, but it is quite difficult to get a 7 in psych but less difficult to get a 5 or 6. Someone today told me a 6 is 60% but I'm not sure about that...

I think lang/lit would be better suited for me because i am creative (artistically though).

I don't plan on doing a science course in the UK but i do plan on studying one in Canada/American. If the amount of memorisation is the same in both subjects i'm definitely going for psychology. I do like the mathematical aspect of economics but i hate economics concepts/theories so yah i probably actually i KNOW i won't enjoy it at IB level.

What made you decide on doing psychology at university, was it the IB course or were you interested in the subject beforehand? What do you find really intriguing about the psychology course? Sorry about the questions

I was interested in psychology before the course because of personal reasons, but doing psych was definitely a reason I ultimately decided to continue it. It's very broad and there were some topics that I didn't like, like Piaget and Vygotsky's theories (though that's an option that may not be done at your school). Personally, I found the memory topic and options of abnormal and developmental psychology more intriguing but I think that varies greatly from person to person. The nice thing about psych is you can technically be a risk-taker and cancel out some of the stuff you've learnt because you know you'll get a choice of things in the test. I effectively didn't study oh maybe...half the syllabus...haha. My last two tests are tomorrow so hopefully that doesn't come back to bite me in the arse.

IB ENGLIT and IGCSE ENGLIT are so different that it doesn't even matter.

And English Lang&Lit is supposed to be easier (it's a replacement for A2, which is for near-fluent speakers), but all the people who took that exam last year did worse than my class, who did English Lit. I'm guessing it's due to the fact the candidates weren't as good as opposed to the difficulty of the exam.

But what I will say is that English Lit is much easier to "game", as in you have a higher chance of getting a 7 if you do a lot of prep vs if you did English Language. I heard Eng Lang is all over the place, especially since there's no past papers.

Ah, i see, the course sounds interesting can't wait to start it next year xD It hopefully won't, but i'd still just read over it just in case cz you never know .

Do you think this subject combination is manageable (í'm a maths/science person)

HL Chemistry
HL Biology
HL Psychology
SL Maths
SL English L&L
SL Spanish Ab initio