M25 HL Paper 1 Unpacked
Since the May 2025 examination session, I’ve seen much discussion on various social media platforms about Paper 1 in both time zones. While we can’t reproduce the prompts verbatim on the site for copyright reasons, I would like to reflect on some of these tasks. In particular, it’s worth considering the appropriate, generally appropriate, and generally inappropriate text type options. This blog post deals with the Higher Level paper 1 prompts from Time Zone 1 (Africa, Europe, Middle East) and Time Zone 2 (Asia-Pacific).
Time Zone 1 (Africa, Europe, Middle East)
Prompt 1
The first option threw up pamphlet, proposal, and speech as potential options to “involve the school administration in addressing” the lack of sleep students get during exam season. The directness and formal nature of a proposal make it the best option, as it can be used to address the school admin directly, either to an individual or a group of senior leaders. A speech could work if it’s clear that the admin team is present in the audience. A pamphlet is just weird. Can you imagine a student standing outside the offices of senior leaders in your school, delivering an incredibly small number of pamphlets by hand to the intended recipients? Me neither!
Prompt 2
This time, students were given the choice of a proposal, a social media posting, or a speech in order to “share their views” on digital footprints with fellow teens. I’ve seen some comments from teachers expressing frustration that the IB sees social media (the most appropriate option here) as a domain exclusively for young people. However, I don’t think that applies here. Just look at the other options. When would a young person ever write a proposal to their peers? They probably wouldn’t have many friends if they engaged in that sort of behaviour! Could a speech work? I guess, but again, you have to engineer the context and make explicit connections to the audience throughout. A similar prompt in the N21 session saw social media post as the most appropriate option because it’s “suitable for sharing ideas with a large group of people who are connected to the writer (‘peers’).” I think the idea is that on many social media platforms (though not all), are closed communities whose members either know each other or, as in this case, know the person posting.
Prompt 3
Perhaps the biggest fuss I’ve seen from English B teachers has been around this prompt. Students had to choose between an article, an interview, and a presentation to “share their experience of new customs and traditions with [their] classmates,” following their participation in a “multicultural summer camp”. Given the relatively narrow audience (classmates), as opposed to something broader, such as “peers” or “school community”, it looks as though the examiners were looking for students to pick presentation as the best medium. An article might work, but you would need to engineer it so that it is clear that the audience is, let’s say, your school community, which of course includes your classmates. An interview would involve reporting on somebody else’s ideas, which isn’t specified in the prompt.
Some of the consternation I’ve heard from teachers stems from concerns that they didn’t prepare their students sufficiently by covering this text type in more detail. Firstly, I’d say to these teachers: don’t worry! Your students have likely given countless presentations during their school experience. Even if these presentations were in a language other than English, the concept is readily transferable. It’s about informing rather than persuading, which is more common with a speech. Secondly, perhaps we ought to consider the way we approach teaching the text types specified in the subject guide? Presenting each one as a separate entity might prevent students from making connections between the key concepts of audience, purpose, and context and how they interact to inform our choices when writing a text. Check out our pages on writing purposes and reflect on how you teach your students to write. Could you make any adjustments to your approach in future?
Time Zone 2 (Asia-Pacific)
Prompt 1
Students were handed an email, an interview, or a social media posting to “share their experience” of an online course designed to prepare them for whatever path they are taking in their further education. At the behest of the organisers, students had to target their text at the wonderfully vague audience of “other people”. With this lack of clarity, students need to choose the most realistic text type for the context, not just the audience and purpose, fully demonstrating their conceptual understanding. In this case, the context (and a healthy dose of common sense) dictates that a social media post would be the most likely go-to medium. Why? Well, you can settle on it as a process of elimination. An interview (as was discussed above) requires reporting on somebody else’s views or experiences, something that’s missing in this prompt. An email is usually sent to a singular, specific person. While emails to larger groups are possible, especially in a school context, just encourage your students to consider whether they’d send a whole school email just to “share their experience” of an online course. Probably not. That leaves a social media post, which makes sense here because it’s a platform where “other people” who are interested in taking the course might read their post if they’re considering taking the course themselves. This does imply, however, a more open social media community than the one in the time zone 1 exam.
Prompt 2
For this task, students had an interview, a proposal, or a set of instructions at their disposal in order to share the details of a conversation they had with an expert on examination anxiety among pre-university students globally. The moment students see any mention of reporting on a conversation they had with someone, they should immediately start thinking about an interview. It’s one of those text types that just screams, “pick me!” when this context is given. The three content points, however, make a set of instructions a viable alternative because they allow for the author to present their instructions as a set of tips. For top marks, I’d make sure it was clear that the primary source of these tips was the expert, rather than the student themselves. A proposal isn’t going to do much good here as they tend to be aimed at an individual or small group of people with some sort of power to effect change. As this isn’t specified in the context or purpose, students should steer clear.
Prompt 3
The final prompt on this paper provided students with either a letter, a report (presumably official, not news), or a social media posting to handle the task. The specified audience was the board of an environmental organisation they belong to, which has implemented “new actions to reduce water usage in the community”. The purpose, however, was implied. It doesn’t require too much inference, though, as it states that the board “wants to know how successful these [changes] have been so far.” This requires a text type that evaluates the effectiveness of said measures and, as the third content point demands, “suggest[s] the next steps.” A report is the perfect tool for this job as it is usually written for people in a position of authority who are too busy (or lazy?!) to do the work themselves. Perhaps that’s a slightly reductive view, but you get my point. The formal nature of a report (we don’t tend to write them for our friends) is also a good indicator that this is the best choice. What about a letter, though? They can be formal, right? Well, if the student embedded their report within a letter, there’s no reason this couldn’t be deemed appropriate. However, they would need to address it to the Members of the Board, and include the relevant conventions of the text type in order to hit the top of the highest band. A social media posting, as has been discussed previously, is for a broader audience than is required here. It’s also too public a forum for such a matter.
Final Thoughts
It’s worth emphasising that these are solely my views and not those of the IB. Examiners will have been issued with clear guidelines with detailed justifications for each text type. Although an examiner, I’m not examining this session, so I haven’t been party to these insights.
What can we learn from this session’s prompts? The same as we can from every other: yes, ideally, we will cover the full range of text types, but it’s more important, effective, and efficient to teach the conceptual understanding associated with each. A text type isn’t just a list of conventions!
I’m curious to hear your take on these prompts or my analysis of them. Feel free to comment below!
By Joe O'Callaghan