Should I do my extended essay in Spanish?

[John Lakers]

I currently am in Spanish B SL, and I took two years of Spanish in high school. Should I be fluent in order to write the EE? Will my grammar and vocab be graded? I am not so good on Spanish grammar and my Spanish vocab range isn't that big. If I do my EE in Spanish, what topics can I do?

[Emmi]

You don't have to be fluent to write a Group 2 EE (the IB doesn't expect you to be), but you're going to want to have enough command over the language and write well enough that you can write a 4000 word research paper with a high level of language skill. At the SL level you may be able to write an EE in Spanish, or you might not. It's not enough to simply be doing well in your Spanish class. How well do you understand the language? Can you produce a high quality research paper written entirely in another language? Ask yourself these questions, and ask your teacher as well, and if you feel like you can do it, go for it. Your vocabulary range will obviously expand as you write, but if your grammar is not that good, be careful. It might be better not to do an EE in Spanish if you're already not feeling too comfortable with the basics.

A Group 2 EE can either be about the language itself (more of a linguistics approach), some aspect of Spanish culture, or Spanish literature (similar to doing an EE in literature, just it's in Spanish on at least one book that was originally written in Spanish).

[Guest Positron]

Do you mean doing your EE in Spanish B, or writing a Group 3-6 EE in Spanish (an EE can be written in English, Spanish, or French). If you meant the first option, ask your teacher if she/he thinks your Spanish is good enough. Your teacher knows your Spanish skills a lot better than any of us here on the forum possibly could. On the other hand, if you meant the second option, I don't think it's worth it. You wouldn't even get a bilingual diploma for that (prior to 2011 you would've), so it'd be a whole lot of work for nothing in terms of the IB diploma.