The May 2023 Paper 1 examination – one of two different Paper 1 examinations in different time zones – included an extract from The Guardian newspaper. Those of you who have been following IB examinations for a while will know that this isn’t the first time that texts have been sourced from The Guardian. Perhaps it is an inductive fallacy to assume that The Guardian will, at a future date, make a Paper 1 reappearance, but it might be foolhardy to rule it out! The text in question, ‘No diet, no detox’, is a polemical lifestyle piece, and you will find it here. Stop reading at “…adults who choose vegetables consciously, of their own accord”, and you have the text (image included, but hyperlinks removed) presented to students in the examination. The guiding question was this: ‘How does this article persuade the reader to rethink their approach to food and eating?”. This guiding question, you’ll notice, emphasizes function (or purpose, if you prefer), as several previous guiding questions have. We think it’s a good question to ask. Where students are presented with what they consider less good guiding questions, it is often possible to derive a focused response through the lens of dominant functions. Additionally, this is not the first time a guiding question has highlighted the function of persuasion. That’s not surprising; many non-literary texts involve a persuasive function. It can, in other words, be useful to prepare your students for this kind of text; that is, texts that persuade. As you do so, it can also be helpful to suggest to them that texts may intend to persuade, but that actual readers, with a mind of their own, may not in fact be persuaded. The student’s response - available to subscribers here - is generally excellent and well-focused. It includes discussion of context and intended readers. To those who respond, “but that is no longer required!”, you are correct, but only up to a point. Responses should be focused, not generic and formulaic. This hardly makes reading contextually and with a sense of reader irrelevant. The inclusion of detail on context and intended readers in this instance contribute to the quality of response, lending it a greater sense of critical insight. No response is perfect, so you may ask your students to identify limitations in this one. In addition, the student’s analysis is linear, following the organization of the original article. That’s fine. Other structures are possible, and it can be useful to spend time with your students considering alternative structures.