URGENT! - Question Regarding WLs

[greaterthaninfinity]

1. My teacher says no one can have the same topic for WL in an IB class. Given that our graduating class is a size of seventy people, this is rather impossible. Is this true?

2. My teacher also claims that you are not allowed to analyze the same book twice in WL 1 and 2. Is this true?

Edited February 27, 2010 by greaterthaninfinity

[sweetnsimple786]

2 is true.

About one.. the way my teacher explained it was that teachers shouldn't tell students what to write. If the teacher discusses only a couple of things in depth with all the students, they're going to be influenced and probably will talk about similar things. My teacher made sure no one had the same topic for WL1 [for WL2, it was a different teacher with a different approach]. My class only had 20, but even with 70, I wouldn't be surprised if you guys came up with different topics. I wouldn't worry as long as you don't talk to each other about what topic to do before you finalize a topic. If it turns out some topics are similar, it doesn't really matter [because most likely, your spin & perspective will make yours different than your classmate's]. If you didn't plagiarize, you're fine.

[master135]

Your teacher only mentioned #1 most likely as a precaution, so IB does not suspect copying etc. Nonetheless, there isnt an actual "rule" which prevents students from having a similar topic. In my year of about 60-70 people I am pretty sure some students had topics that were very similar to others. As long as there is not collaboration, both essays will be approached differently (despite having the same topic) - so there shouldn't be such a problem. But its still a little risky.

And yes #2 is true. However, for your second world literature you can use a second book (one of the IOP books) along with a world lit book in a comparison.