Alicia's Blog

In our first year of IB Language & Literature, we had six units with three focusing on literary works, and three focusing on non-literary works. Most of the works that we had studied followed the global issue of gender inequality, and the theme of feminism in society. These works helped us to broaden our understanding about these global issues, how it is common in our everyday lives, and how we can be affected by it.

Literary Works

The three literary works that we studied this school year were A Doll’s House, Antigone, and Persepolis. Each work similarly follows the theme of feminism through different period of times, contexts and perspectives. The work that has the greatest impact on me is A Doll’s House. Although the play was taken place in 1879, several aspects of gender inequality in the play stills exists in our world today. A Doll’s House mainly focuses on the protagonist, Nora, and the antagonist, Torvald, Nora’s husband. This play demonstrates an example of a dysfunctional relationship, as Nora was constantly under Torvald’s shadow, and had to follow by his rules and anything that he tells her to do. Overtime, Nora found it frustrating to stay with Torvald, and eventually found her own freedom and courage to be on her own. Torvald is an example of toxic masculinity, while being condescending towards Nora and making her feel less important than him. This issue can be often seen in our society today, though this topic is widely focused on now compared to the time when the play was set.

Non-Literary Works

The three non-literary works that we studied this school year were the Liza Donnelly cartoons, Ilona Granet signs, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy speeches. The Liza Donnelly cartoons and Ilona Granet signs that we had analyzed mainly follows the theme of feminism; however, the Volodymyr Zelenskyy speeches mainly follow the themes of politics and war. The work that has the greatest impact on me is the Liza Donnelly cartoons. Following the theme of feminism, the cartoons that we had studied focus on issues that women would encounter when doing common tasks. Donnelly’s cartoons are made to be able to connect to the audience and let them relate to them to understand global issues that are happening around them. Although feminism is the main theme shown throughout her cartoons, there are also other themes such as racism, which can be shown in the cartoon, “You’re Not Trying”. These themes are common in our surroundings, which would allow us to better understand Donnelly’s message, as well as why she had chosen to create the cartoons with certain themes that individuals might not be comfortable to easily talk about.

This year, we did one IB assessment, which was the individual oral (IO). I focused on the global issue of societal expectations, and my global issue was “how societal expectations shape children’s perspectives on their future careers.” The literary extract that I had chosen was Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and for my non-literary extract, I chose Liza Donnelly’s cartoon, “Women Astronauts”. Throughout the process of planning my outline and practicing for my oral, I felt that the time went by very quickly and I felt really rushed as I had multiple tests from other classes that I needed to study for as well. During the oral, I felt that I did better on the 10 minute presentation than I had initially expected. During the 5 minute questions and answers part, I was quite struggling as I had to be put on the spot to answer the questions, without being able to brainstorm or think about how or what I should answer beforehand. Despite the small challenges that I had encountered, I think that I did quite well on my overall oral, and I feel relieved that I have already completed it.

In the following year, the second year of IB Language & Literature, we are going to be having three more IB assessments: the HL Essay, Paper 1, and Paper 2. We have done several essay summatives and practices during the first year of Language & Literature, which I have found beneficial for me as I got to learn more about how I can create a well-developed essay. Although personally I think that my essay writing is not very strong, I can still identify improvements that I had made from the first essay that I had written and the last essay that I had written in the first year of L&L. To further improve on essay writing, I found that reading books had really helped me, as well as being able to identify errors that I had made in my previous essay writings. Doing these activities would help me improve more and make me more prepared for the upcoming IB assessments next year.

In our last unit for our first year of IB Language & Literature, we focused more on a current event which was the war that has been occurring between Ukraine and Russia. We viewed this event mainly through Ukraine’s perspective, specifically through the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with his speeches targeted towards different countries. We learned about the use of different rhetorical devices in his speeches, understanding more about how Zelenskyy is able to appeal more to his targeted audience, and how he is able to let others understand more about Ukraine’s current issue through the perspective of Ukrainians. Comparing to our previous units, this unit does not focus as much on feminism, but more on politics and war.

One of the first assignments that we had worked on this unit was to identify ethos, pathos, logos in our lives. We came up with an argument that we think is important to us, and used the rhetorical devices—ethos, pathos, and logos—to make our argument convincing. We had to explain our appeal, as well as why it is the appeal that we chose. For my argument, I came up with “more school food choices during lunch”, then explaining the different appeals that can be used to make my argument more convincing.

Throughout the unit, we analyzed more of Zelenskyy’s speech individually, starting with his speech to the Israeli Knesset. We had to read through Zelenskyy’s speech to identify the purpose of his speech, how he attempted to persuade Israel to get what he wants, how and why he appeals to the different rhetorical devices, and how persuasive we think the speech is and why.

Similar to the previous assignment, we analyzed more of Zelenskyy’s speech, identifying the purpose of his speech, how he attempted to persuade his audience, how and why he appeals to the different rhetorical devices, and how persuasive we think the speech is. However, for this assignment, we chose a speech that he has targeted to that we are interested in. I chose the speech “Address by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the participants of the Group of Seven summit” as I wanted to identify the differences between how Zelenskyy had targeted his speech to an individual country, and how he targeted his one speech to several countries.