IB and AP English classes reflect different pathways students can choose in their high school career. IB, as an internationally based program, analyzes a much more diverse range of texts focusing on global issues, while AP focuses on experiences in Western classics and relates them to larger themes. IB Language and Literature teaches analysis of often fictional stories in bodies of work like literature, film, paintings and comics. The “literature” part of the class also includes more non-traditional texts like film and song lyrics. In contrast, AP Literature analyzes three types of texts: prose such as short fiction; poetry; and long fiction, like novels and plays.
IB Lang and Lit 12 teacher Marita White (she/her) said she is required to teach works from at least three different genres, periods and places, along with two texts translated from foreign languages, for her IB class.
“What winds up happening is we have texts from all over the world, all different time periods, written in all kinds of languages to really focus on these global human experiences,” White said.
AP Literature teacher Alayna Miller (she/her) — who said that she can only speak for her experiences with AP Literature — said that since AP classes are built to teach AP curriculum skills, the specific text doesn’t matter as long as students learn relevant skills for their AP exam. Miller also teaches music and art analysis in her AP Literature class.
“With AP Literature, the focus is analyzing and asking our students to be close readers,” Miller said. “How can we analyze text to better understand what the authors are saying about the human experience and universal understandings of topics like love or conversations about mortality?”
IB Lang and Lit 12 teacher and Extended Essay Coordinator Elizabeth Lund (she/her) said that she appreciates IB’s mission of international mindedness and considers IB to have holistic and student-driven assessments. White also said that every IB course is designed to have a global focus, but especially humanities courses such as English. In IB Language and Literature, students analyze global issues related to gender, race, power, education, science, technology or society.
“Every time that we do a Lit piece like a novel, we have to spend as much time on a Lang piece like a film or a collection of an artists’ work, something like that that is united by similar global issues,” White said.
Compared to IB classes, AP classes culminate in a single test with a much larger quantity of reading and writing. Junior and AP Literature student Oliver Wakeman (he/him) said that this sets a clear end goal, which Miller prepares her class for by assigning timed in-class essays. He also said that based on his experience in his IB history class, he feels that AP moves much faster through units, which he prefers.
“The units go by really quickly,” Wakeman said. “Even though we’ve had these couple of snow days and power outages, she’s able to continue it, because we have to follow the AP structure in our lessons, because of our deadline for the AP test.”
Inglemoor added IB Language and Literature as a choice in the 2016-17 school year. In the following school year, Inglemoor stopped offering IB Literature because not enough students signed up. Lund said that the modern focus and challenge of IB Language and Literature make it an appealing way to study English.
“It incorporates so many more different kinds of literacies, like being able to read images, being able to look at all kinds of texts in your life in a critical way — not just literature,” Lund said. “It’s very accessible to many different kinds of students. And it’s very engaging because we’re often looking at things that are very current and contemporary.”
Annalise Enright (she/her), a senior in Lund’s IB Lang and Lit class, said that the class focuses on making interpretive leaps and using one’s creative intellect to analyze the author’s choices.
“Especially during our art unit last year, instead of just taking the images at face value, they would really push you to interpret, for example, the number of people or the different colors and what that meant in the social context of when it was made,” Enright said.
White said that IB actively tries to confront the definition of classic literature and battle its traditional roots in racism and colonialism.
“The IB curriculum — we get to tweak it however we want, within the confines of our (IB) list and also the teachers who are teaching it, and we are always trying to make things more relevant and also reflect our student body more, whether that’s immigration status or race or ethnicity or language or gender presentation or sexuality,” White said.
Lund said that discussions in IB Lang and Lit make every student comfortable with speaking up — an essential college skill. White said that both the IB and AP courseloads prepare students for college. Miller similarly said that learning to exercise analytical thinking and use a specific lens are valuable in higher education.
“I think both of our courses do a really good job of instilling all of those steps until — with the amount of test prep we do — it becomes natural by the end of the year,” White said. “And these skills really translate to other subjects, too — basically any humanities.”
Enright said that IB helps students develop more independence and is useful for both college and life in general.
“I think that it prepares students very well for college classes, just because it pushes you to look past the basics of the work and really take it in the social context, but also in a personal context, so that you can see the different perspectives and interpretations,” Enright said. “And it’s also great for problem-solving for societal issues.”
White said that any option to challenge oneself is worth taking. She said there are benefits to both: for example, AP classes tend to read more and IB has a greater variety of texts.
“Whether you want to take AP or IB, just go for it and see what happens,” White said. “If you work hard, you try your best every day, then you’ll be successful, and you’ll be a better person for it.”
