TOK presentation and essay format discussion.

[Guest]

Hi guys, I read both the official TOK presentation and essay guide. It was really helpful but it seemed to lack how to format the presentation or the essay. I find that I've been having difficulty with getting the right format to write an essay or make a presentation. My teacher always told me my format was wrong but didn't exactly tell me how to fix it. I did research on formats myself but there didn't seem to be anything concrete regarding how to format TOK essays and presentations so I'm turning to IB survival.

My format for essays are:

Intro - RLS(real life situation). KI, AOKs/WOKs to deal with

Body 1. Explore KI with either 1 AOK or WOK.

Body 2. Counter claim to Body 1.

Body 3. Counter claim(essentially back to the original claim in body 1) to body 2.

Body 4. Different perspectives.

Conclusion.

My format for presentations are the same.

Is this format good enough? This is what my TOK teacher sort of taught me. What are your formats? Can we share and discuss which is the most effective to get As?

Edited April 13, 2013 by JYC

[SurajM]

I think you need to format is differently, this format will not leave you enough substantial information to do justice to your topic. Generally when you select a topic, you form your knowledge issues and then adress the claim and counterclaim relating both to real life situations to support your thesis. Each paragraph usually begins with a thesis statement, (what you observe), a claim and a counter claim. You should have 3-4 of these types of paragraphs each using examples for current events. Avoid the cliched examples like terrorism. Keep in mind it is always good to use an example from your personal life, showing IB that you understand what you have learn over the 2 years and are able to interpret it and apply it to your own life.

As for the TOK presentation, I would say the format is different from the essay. First select your topic. Then form your knowledge issues. It is good to have one main issue and smaller one that can branch off the main one later on. Apply a RLS to it. Address what you see using a lot of TOK terminology, fallacies are always useful and they add substance to your presentation. After which you would probably want to talk about the AOKS and WOKS on separate slides. This makes it easier for the audience.

I hope this helped!