IB English HL 1: Course Concepts

Concept: derives from the study of cognition and how people come to understand
the world.

For the purpose of this course, we will use the term in the context of how an idea is
formed through generalizing our experiences; thus, we form concepts to help us
organize our experiences into significant meaning.

THE SEVEN COURSE CONCEPTS:

1. Identity
2. Culture
3. Creativity
4. Communication
5. Perspective
6. Transformation
7. Representation

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1. IDENTITY: Our goal for this concept is to attempt to understand what the author
is like, at least represented through the particular piece of work that we are
studying. How/what does the author think, feel, value, and believe—all of which we
come to understand through our interpretation of the work.
● How can the identity of an individual or group be revealed through
literature?
● How significant is an author’s identity in their creation—and our
interpretation—of a literary work?
● What role does the identity of a reader play in the act of appreciation and
interpretation?
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2. CULTURE: This next concept focuses on an understanding of the values and

beliefs of the author’s culture that directly influences how the writer sees the world,
what they desire to write about, and the crucial linguistic and literary devices that
they implement, such as diction, connotation, images, metaphors, and symbols. The
more we learn about the culture in which the literary work was created, the better we
will understand the important nuances of the work.
● How are authors influenced by the beliefs, values, and attitudes of the time
and place in which they write?
● Can authors generate whole new forms of art and literature without building
on the preexisting conventions?
● How do literary texts reflect, develop, or challenge cultural traditions?
● How do we approach literary texts from different times and cultures to our
own?
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3. CREATIVITY: This concept is equally as relevant for an author as it is for a reader.
Writers utilize creativity in order to generate an original piece of art that details
meaning through the constructive uses of devices such as: setting, characters, plot,
dialogue, structure, metaphors, symbols, motifs, figurative language, etc. However,
readers must also implement mindful creative thinking in order to effectively
understand and accurately interpret the author’s imaginative devices.
● Why do people create? And why use writing as a source of creation?
● How do writers use reality, imagination, and craft to create effective and
compelling works?
● What role does creativity play in the way readers respond to texts?
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4. COMMUNICATION: This course concept deals directly with the previous ones of
identity and creativity, in that the author is attempting to communicate their
specific ideas, while using various elements of craft and technique to do so. Our goal
is to become equipped with the skills necessary to understand that message through
various means of analysis and interpretation. Think of a masterful piece of art as
being similar to a puzzle—and one of the great pleasures of studying literature is the
satisfaction we feel when we have accurately solved the puzzle of an author’s
strategy and, in doing so, have broadened our knowledge of the world.
● How and why do certain writers and readers connect?
● To what extent are authors the owners of meaning?
● How and why do we disagree in our responses to texts?
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5. PERSPECTIVE: This next course concept also deals directly with the previous
concept of identity, in that one of our goals is to accurately interpret the true
perspective of the author, despite the fact that multiple different perspectives on
main issues might be present within the text through different characters or even
the narrator. Most of the time, the specific perspectives of characters will fail to align
with that of the actual author, which requires readers to be acutely aware of each
perspective and work to decipher which is the real one that will lead to a better
understanding of the main theme of the text.

You also must work to be aware of your own perspective, and how your time and place
and your personal knowledge influences what you are capable of understanding or
how your assumptions and expectations might shape your interpretation of any given
work.
● How do authors create and control voice and perspective?
● How does perspective impact the emotional and intellectual proximity of
readers?
● How are writers’ and readers’ perspectives influenced by their cultural and
historical context?
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6. TRANSFORMATION: This next concept refers to the variety of ways in which

works are transformed from one thing into another. This occurs in two primary
ways: 1) the development of intertextuality, where an earlier piece of literature is
referenced in another work, commonly known as an allusion—in this case of
transformation, the original story is changed to reflect the author’s ideas; 2) when
an original work is translated into a new language for the benefit of a different
culture, commonly known as a work in translation. Allusions can easily be
researched and explored to discover meaning, whereas there are many more
challenges to understanding a work in translation, though we will discuss those before
reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
● How and why do writers often borrow or make reference to ideas and
techniques from other writers?
● How do literary texts adhere to and deviate from conventions and techniques
associated with certain genres and forms?
● How can literary works and readers have a transformative effect on each
other?
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7. REPRESENTATION: This final concept focuses on the relationship between

literature and reality—how an author has developed a text in order to develop
themes and ideas that convey some truth about the human experience, human
nature, and/or human relationships. Whether this is through fiction, non-fiction,
prose, poetry, or drama, our goal is to analyze each piece of literature to recognize
the ways in which an author has chosen to represent their ideas, as well as to what
degree that work represents reality.
● Do literary texts represent or reshape reality?
● How is the act of representation problematic? Consider different genres of
paintings, such as impressionism and cubism…
● How do representations reveal and conceal underlying values or attitudes?