Common mistakes · English A · 8 min read
IB English Paper 1 tips: 12 mistakes that cap your mark, with fixes
For Language and Literature and Literature students: the habits that keep Paper 1 essays in the middle bands, shown with original sample texts and before-and-after sentences.
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Most IB English Paper 1 essays that stall in the middle bands do so for the same few reasons: they list features without explaining their effect, retell the text instead of analysing it, or never commit to a line of argument. The fixes are habits you can practise. Below are twelve common mistakes in Paper 1 for both Language and Literature and Literature, each with a sample of what loses marks and what earns them. The sample texts are written for this guide, so you can see the whole extract the analysis refers to.
What is Paper 1, and how is it marked?
Paper 1 is an analysis of an unseen text, with a guiding question to help you in. In Language and Literature it is called guided textual analysis and uses non-literary texts, often with visual elements: adverts, articles, speeches, cartoons, web pages. In Literature it is guided literary analysis of literary passages, such as prose, poetry or drama.
| Item | SL | HL |
|---|---|---|
| Time | 1 hour 15 minutes | 2 hours 15 minutes |
| Texts | Two offered; you analyse one | Two offered; you analyse both, in two separate essays |
| Marks | 20 | 40 (20 per text) |
Each response is commonly described as marked on four criteria of 5 marks each: understanding and interpretation, analysis and evaluation, focus and organization, and language. The paper is usually reported as 35% of the final grade at both levels.
The timings come from the IB's official exam timetable. The marks, criteria and weighting match the published course outlines and school materials, but your teacher has the official guide: check the current criteria and descriptors with them.
Mistakes in your argument
1. Spotting features without explaining their effect
Naming a technique earns very little on its own. The marks are in what it does: to meaning, to the reader, and to the text's purpose. A useful test: if you deleted the name of the technique, would your sentence still say something?
Loses marksThe headline uses a tricolon and anaphora ("Your city. Your lungs. Your move.").
Earns marksThe repeated "Your" moves responsibility for air quality from the council onto the reader, so that by "Your move" a public-health problem has become a personal challenge the reader is dared to answer.
2. Summarising the text
Retelling what happens is the most common reason an essay feels long but scores low. The examiner has the text; they need your reading of it. Take this short original extract:
After the funeral the kitchen was too clean. Someone had washed the cups and stacked them upside down on the draining board, the way Nana never did, and the radio on the windowsill was off for the first time in my life. I turned it on. A man was reading the shipping forecast in a voice like folded laundry. I left him talking to the empty chairs and went to find my coat.
Loses marksThe narrator goes into the kitchen after the funeral. The cups have been washed and the radio is off. The narrator turns the radio on and then leaves to get a coat.
Earns marksGrief appears here as small wrongness rather than open emotion: the kitchen is "too clean", the cups are stacked "the way Nana never did", so the narrator measures the loss through the absence of her habits. Turning the radio back on is an attempt to restore her presence, and leaving it "talking to the empty chairs" shows that the attempt cannot work.
3. No thesis, so no line of argument
An introduction that says "In this essay I will analyse language, structure and imagery" promises nothing. A thesis makes a claim about how the text creates meaning, which the rest of the essay proves. It gives the criterion for focus and organization something to reward.
Loses marksThis extract is about grief. The writer uses many techniques such as imagery, simile and short sentences to show the narrator's feelings.
Earns marksThe extract presents grief indirectly, through a domestic space that has been put right by strangers, and its restrained, almost flat narration suggests a narrator who can register the loss only through objects, not yet through words.
Mistakes with the guiding question
4. Ignoring the guiding question
The guiding question points to a feature the text uses in an important way. Writing a general essay that never addresses it, without a clear focus of your own instead, throws away a ready-made line of argument. If you use it, answer it explicitly in your introduction and return to it in your conclusion.
5. Following it so closely that you miss the text
The opposite mistake is treating the guiding question as the whole task. If it asks how the writer uses setting, an essay that discusses nothing else may miss the narrator's voice, the structure or the turn at the end. Use the question as your entry point, then let your thesis cover how that feature works with the rest of the text. You may take a different approach entirely, but only with a clear focus of your own, stated early.
Mistakes with non-literary texts
6. Ignoring text type, audience and purpose
For a non-literary text, every choice serves a purpose for an audience in a context. An analysis of a council poster that never says it is a council poster, aimed at commuters and trying to change behaviour, is analysing words in a vacuum.
Loses marksThe writer uses short sentences and the word "Your" to create a dramatic effect.
Earns marksAs a council campaign aimed at drivers, the poster cannot order anyone out of their car, so it relies on short verbless fragments and the possessive "Your" to make the change feel like the reader's own decision rather than a rule imposed by the council.
7. Ignoring the visual and layout choices
In Language and Literature, the image, layout, typography and logo are part of the text. In our poster, a long grey queue of cars fills most of the frame while one cyclist slips past at the edge, so the image makes the argument the words only imply: the cyclist is moving, the drivers are not. Discuss how word and image work together, and say where your eye is led and why.
Mistakes with evidence and terminology
8. Quoting long passages
A three-line quotation followed by "this shows the narrator is sad" is padding. Quote the few words that carry the effect and embed them in your own sentence.
Loses marks"Someone had washed the cups and stacked them upside down on the draining board, the way Nana never did, and the radio on the windowsill was off for the first time in my life." This shows that things have changed.
Earns marksThe detail that the cups are stacked "the way Nana never did" makes ordinary tidiness feel like an intrusion: kindness from strangers erases her habits.
9. Misusing technical terms
A wrong term costs more than no term, because it shows a gap in understanding. Common slips: calling any comparison a metaphor, calling any contrast juxtaposition, calling any weather pathetic fallacy, and calling any human-sounding detail personification.
Loses marksThe writer uses personification in "the kitchen was too clean" to show the narrator's sadness.
Earns marks"The kitchen was too clean" is not figurative at all: its force comes from "too", which turns a neutral description into the narrator's judgement that something is wrong. The extract's one figurative image comes later, in the simile "a voice like folded laundry", which makes the forecaster sound orderly and soft, the comfort of routine.
Use a term only when you are certain of it, and when naming it helps you explain the effect more precisely.
10. Generic reader effects
"Engages the reader", "makes the reader want to read on" and "creates a vivid image" could describe almost any text. Say which reader, what they feel or think, and why it matters for the text's meaning or purpose. A useful check: could your sentence be pasted into an essay about a different text? If so, rewrite it.
Mistakes in structure and timing
11. Organising by technique
Paragraphs titled in your head as "imagery", "structure", "tone" produce a list. Organise by claims instead, each one a step in your argument, and bring in whichever features prove that claim. For the extract above, that might be: grief shown through objects; the radio as an attempt to restore presence; the final sentence as a refusal to stay.
12. Running out of time, or comparing at HL
At SL, a plan that works for 75 minutes: about 15 minutes reading and annotating, 5–10 minutes planning your thesis and claims, 45 minutes writing, 5 minutes checking. At HL, split the 2 hours 15 minutes roughly evenly between the two texts, and keep the two essays separate: they are marked independently, so a comparison earns nothing extra. Starting the second text with only 40 minutes left is a common way to lose HL marks. Our guide to time management in IB exams has ways to drill this pacing.
A five-minute plan that prevents most of these mistakes
- Context line: text type, audience, purpose (Lang & Lit) or form, speaker and situation (Literature).
- Thesis: one sentence about how the text creates its meaning, which also answers the guiding question.
- Three or four claims, in an order that builds, each with two or three short quotations or visual details.
- One "however": an ambiguity, a second reading, or a point where the text resists your thesis.
- Final sentence: what the text achieves, for whom.
Building a thesis and returning to it is the same skill the Individual Oral tests out loud; our guide to preparing for the IO shows how to rehearse it. For practice material, see where to find IB past papers legally, then mark each practice essay against the twelve mistakes above before you read your teacher's comments.
Questions students ask
Do I have to answer the guiding question in Paper 1?
No. You may take a different approach, but the guiding question is usually the most efficient way into the text. If you go another way, make your own focus clear in the introduction and make sure it is at least as central to the text as the feature the question points to.
How many paragraphs should a Paper 1 essay have?
There is no set number. A typical strong essay has an introduction with a thesis, three or four body paragraphs each built around one claim, and a short conclusion. Plan by claims, not by a paragraph count.
Should I compare the two texts at HL?
No. At HL you write two separate analyses, one for each text, and each is marked on its own. Comparison belongs in Paper 2.
How do I revise for an unseen paper?
Practise on unseen texts of the types your course uses, under timed conditions, and mark your own work against the criteria before your teacher does. Past and specimen papers from your teacher or your school's subscription are the best material; our guide to finding IB past papers explains where they legally come from.
Try one: English A
A travel company's advert shows a single empty sunlounger facing a turquoise sea, under the headline "Somewhere, a beach is waiting for you." Which sentence is the strongest analysis of the headline?
- The headline uses personification, because a beach cannot actually wait for anyone.
- The advert is trying to persuade people to book a beach holiday with the company.
- By making the beach "wait", the headline presents the holiday as already reserved for the reader, and the single empty sunlounger fits that space to one person, so booking feels less like a purchase than claiming something that is already yours; the vague "Somewhere" lets each reader supply their own ideal beach.
- The personification is very effective and makes the reader feel relaxed and want to go on holiday.
Show the answer and why
Answer: C
C explains what the language does (turns a purchase into a reservation already held for the reader), links word and image, and notices how "Somewhere" works for a mass audience. A identifies the feature correctly but says nothing about its effect. B summarises the purpose. D claims an effect so generic it could describe any advert.