IB Internal Assessment Help

Look at a weak IA and the problem is rarely the writing. It is that the research question could never have produced a good report.

A chemistry student picks a question whose measurable effect is smaller than the uncertainty in their equipment. A biology student designs an investigation that yields four data points. A maths student chooses a topic where the mathematics stops at the syllabus and has nowhere to go. Each writes a competent report about an investigation that was capped before it started.

This is why we push hard on the question and comparatively little on the prose. A good question makes the rest of the IA possible. A bad one cannot be written around.

What makes a question workable

• The effect you are measuring is comfortably larger than your measurement uncertainty.
• You can generate enough data points, with repeats, in the lab time you actually have.
• There is a mechanism to explain, not just a correlation to report.
• Something can go wrong in an interesting way, which is what the evaluation section needs.

Sciences: Physics, Chemistry, Biology

An individual investigation with a written report. Marks turn on the question, the handling of uncertainty, and an evaluation that weighs which limitations mattered rather than listing every possible source of error. See IB Physics, IB Chemistry and IB Biology.

Mathematics: the Exploration

Topic depth decides the band. Personal engagement and reflection are separately assessed and are where students who write well still lose marks. See IB Maths.

Economics

Three commentaries on recent news articles, each mapped to a different part of the syllabus. Article selection is half the work: an article with no scope for a diagram and an evaluation cannot be rescued by good writing. See Economics.

English and languages

The Individual Oral, plus the HL Essay in Language A. Both need a narrow line of inquiry. Broad ones produce broad work. See IB English.

History and the humanities

The Historical Investigation, where the source evaluation section carries a disproportionate share of the available marks and is the part students rush.

We coach the thinking: framing the question, designing the method, deciding what to do about the data you actually got, and structuring the evaluation. We read drafts and tell you what is not working.

We do not write IAs, supply data, or hand over drafts. This is not a disclaimer for form's sake. IB schools run submitted work through similarity checking, coordinators know what their students write like, and an academic honesty finding follows a student to every university that has offered them a place. The consequence lands on the student, never on the centre that wrote it.

Whenever your school sets the deadline, work backwards and start earlier than feels necessary. The compressible parts of an IA are the writing and the analysis. The parts that cannot be compressed are collecting data, discovering the method does not work, and collecting it again. Students who leave it late do not get a second attempt at the experiment.

A workable shape: question settled and approved, then a pilot run, then the real data collection, then a first full draft with a fortnight still in hand.