Dear all new year 12s,
First of all I would like to wish you luck with your start in the IB. Then I would like to ask if any of you have feared the choice of English literature HL, due to how many books were put on display during the IB introduction evening last year? Well, perhaps not, but I can certainly admit that it freaked me out when I saw them all out together and I realised how much I had to read and what was to come.
The best advice I, as a year 13 can give you, is to simply never stop reading. Now I know, that sounds insane. I don’t mean have your nose permanently glued to a book, because how boring would that be (even for a bookworm like myself). All I can recommend is you use up your “dead-time” like the time you use to travel to and from school or the time u spend on your phone in your bed before going to sleep to read. It doesn’t matter if you are a slow reader or if you only read for 10 minutes each day, but do it. And definitely don’t stop using this time to read, if you have finished the book you are going to work on next, start the next one down the list. This way reading each day becomes a habit and you can get ahead with your reading. This will especially help if you are a slow reader or struggle with reading as you will be able to go at your own pace without feeling lost or behind during lessons.
Another important consideration with the novels in this course, is to not rely on reading time in class as this will rarely happen. Most of the lessons will be used to discuss themes in the novel or events that took place and to be able to participate at your best capability, you will need to have read the novel before you start working on it in class. And don’t get overwhelmed by the quantity, because what you will find is that the books are grouped together in threes for each component of the course, including IOP, IOC, written assignments..etc. all things you will learn about soon. The best part about this, is that once you have completed a component like the IOP which is done around January of year 12, you can completely forget about those books and move onto the next three, making the course fun, and most of all bearable!
To conclude, you should just enjoy the course and what it entails, even if that does mean going outside of your comfort zone with regards to reading. I personally found most of the novels to be thoroughly eye-opening and fascinating, but again it is completely understandable to run into some form of struggle along the way, everyone does and no IB student will ever love every book that they are given.