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"How do you get a 7 in HL English?"


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Hey everyone,

I'm currently in my first year of the IB and one of my HL courses is English L/L. Despite having hated english last year, I am absolutely in love with it this year. I have an absolutely fabulous teacher who has really motivated me into wanting to do well (he also convinced me to switch it up to HL (rather than SL)). Of course I've heard all of the (probably true) rumours about it being incredibly difficult to achieve a 7 at HL. At the moment, I often find myself wanting to do something to "study" for english but having no idea what to do. 
Anyone here who's taken/is taking HL english and is achieving high marks? What do you do (unless you happen to be inherently good at english I suppose haha)? How can I study/improve? "How does one get a 7?" (Even though I really do understand that it's much, much more complicated than that) 

Thank you so much! 
Alex

 

(btw I got an A and A for IGCSE English Lang and IGCSE English Lit respectively (this is with very little studying (as I, as mentioned above, hated english)))

 

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I'm SL, but this applies for HL as well. The jump from IGCSE to IB was smaller than in my other IB classes, though I definitely felt it despite doing quite well on the IGCSE.

 When you write essays and get them back, read through the feedback thoroughly and carefully. If you don't understand some of it, talk to the teacher and explain what they mean. In my personal opinion English is like maths where you can only improve by actually doing exercises etc. I will make a bit of a stretch here and say that reading books will help you improve on your grammar, vocabulary, as well as the sentence structure. 

For FOAs remember to structure your arguments in an order that makes sense. This one seems obvious but it happened before that my classmates and I said things that made less sense in the order we told them in. Also, if you're shy and don't like talking in front of others, practice your talk in front of your friends or family. Talk slowly and clearly, but don't overdo it as you might get marks deducted for this as well. Your sentences should be complex though not too hard to follow for someone who doesn't have your notes/doesn't know your topic. Basically, be understandable :P 

Good luck. Since I have not completed any written tasks yet, I can't comment on those!

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  • 9 months later...

I am being predicted a high 6 for English HL and when I asked my teacher how I can improve she said that I should be thinking critically when I read any text, see the deeper meaning of every text you see when you are out and about. Another important thing is to go through your past essays and really identify your weakness and work on them. 

For FOA and written tasks, pick things that you are passionate about, that way you will be more inclined to do well. I just completed my second FOA and I managed to get a seven and I honestly didn't spend a lot of time on either of them as I was passionate and it felt like it was a breeze. IOC is all about practice, know your texts well and practice actually speaking. For me personally, I felt this was the most challenging. 

Written Task 1s are a breeze, make them fun and interesting. A friend of mine did her's in the form of a text message conversation and it was hilarious! Written task 2s are a bit more challenging and for that, you really have to pick the correct text and question. 

 

Hope this was helpful, and you can get a 7 if you put your heart to it. Good Luck!

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