Paper 2 abgesagt
Vor kurzem hat das IB Änderungen bezüglich der Prüfungsmodalitäten für Mai 2021 angekündigt. Für beide Literaturkurse (Literature und Language & Literature) wird es nun kein Paper 2 geben. Alle Schüler werden nur das Paper 1 schreiben.
Diese Ankündigung wirft natürlich die Frage auf, welche Konsequenzen diese Entscheidung für die Unterrichtspraxis hat. Das IB betont, dass die neue Prüfungssituation nicht bedeutet, dass die bisher nicht gelesenen literarischen Werke nicht behandelt werden sollen. Nach wie vor lesen SL-Schüler vier und HL-Schüler sechs literarische Werke als Teil ihres Kursprogramms. Ich möchte an dieser Stelle eine sehr detaillierte und klare Aussage des Curriculum-Managers im Original zitieren:
It is important to point out that the adaptation was made to the assessment model and it aimed at alleviating the assessment pressure on teachers and students in the present context. No changes were made to the syllabus content or structure, though. The requirements remain the same.
The elimination of paper 2 will impact each of the two subjects differently and it must not be taken to mean that fewer works will be studied in either of them.
In the case of language A: literature, the study of the remaining works will surely be repurposed focusing more sharply on the characteristics and conventions of the different literary forms. The assessment focus will probably shift, when studying the remaining works, from the comparative one central to paper 2 to the analytical, more immanent one favoured by paper 1. We hope that students will still be encouraged in their portfolios to establish connections, and comparisons and contrasts, between the works they study, and one could very well claim that such comparative and contrastive activities could help deepen and consolidate the understanding that students have as regards what texts in one same literary form, or in one subcategory within one literary form, share, and how they are different from texts in other subcategory or in another literary form. This connective, or comparative and contrastive, aspect is central to the course, as one of the areas of exploration makes explicitly evident, and the elimination of paper 2 must not imply that this focus is lost: it just needs to be reoriented towards another assessment component.
The same could be said about language A: language and literature. It is true that paper 1 will contain only non-literary texts, but we all know how much discussion has gone on in the IB communities and in workshops about what makes a text literary and what makes a text non-literary. The elimination of paper 2 should not mean that the remaining works do not have to be studied: it means that they must be studied, but from a different perspective, i.e. the perspective of what makes them literary and therefore different from non-literary texts, and what their analysis requires that is different from the analysis that non-literary texts require. Teachers who have planned to teach graphic novels or prose: non-fiction works in the second year may perhaps be in a better position to do this, but this need not be the case either. The study of poetry may make it easier to understand what is at play in an advertisement, for example. As in the case of language A: literature, the study of the remaining works needs to be repurposed so that it may be useful for paper 1. The holistic way in which the literary and the non-literary have been inextricably integrated in the new course will surely help to do this as well.
The removal of paper 2 will allow teachers and students to focus in the second year and as far as summative assessment is concerned, on one component only, and use the remaining works and non-literary bodies of work or texts to focus students on the skills that will be assessed in paper 1, instead of having to cater for the requirements of two assessment components while at the same time teaching the works and bodies of work that had been planned.