The Paper 1 assessment criteria awards students up to 12 marks for their use of language but up to 18 marks for the quality of their ideas. Failing to read (and understand) the prompt can result in students needlessly dropping marks. For instance, if a student misses 1 of the 2 (SL) or 3 (HL) content points, the examiner notes state that "no more than the 4-6 band should be awarded, since the task has been ‘generally...