This post is the result of the work of my Theory of Knowledge classes at the Overseas Family School. The idea here is that we want to pull into the English language some of the richness of other languages. Other languages have words that simply do not translate easily into English. These are sometimes called "untranslatable" words, but of course any word can be translated. More accurately they are words that don't have equivalents in other languages.

Often these words show us something unique or special about a culture --they might have a word for something that people in other cultures may have never thought about. Some students also think that to fully understand these words you need to understand the culture or how people think about things a little differently in that part of the world.

Please share words that you know in your language (in the comments below), that we should (or could) start using in English. Don’t forget to provide an example. 

Unique Words from...

The purpose of this article is to help you strengthen the logic and argument of your ToK essay. This is great for making final touches to your work and to help you spot some common mistakes. And it will, of course, pull your mark up. I’m just going to assume that you’re already using my Essay structure (click here if you're not sure). (It’s a 7 paragraph, 2 section structure which works with just about every question). It will make a lot more sense if you are following this approach

Getting Started

When you first get assigned your real ToK essay, you’ll have a few “titles” to choose from. You choose a title, and then you have to come up with a KI for it and then a thesis. The thesis is your brief answer to your KI (or your hypothesis).

The Approach

In general your essay is about claims (with examples), counterclaims (with examples) and conclusions. It’s important that you understand that your claims always support your thesis and your...

Here is a layout you can follow for your HL Business Management IA. The layout has changed a bit recently, for example in terms of the cover sheet requirements, but this is up-to-date.

(If you're looking for the SL Business IA structure, that one is right here). 

The Proposal and the IA should be included in a single document, using double-spaced Arial, sized 12 font. 

Please remember to include all of your sources (preferably using MLA) as you go. This goes for every fact that you include or any opinion that you write, which was informed by something you read. Citing your sources is VERY important. Be careful with it.  

Pre-Research Proposal Material

Title page 

Include:

• Your Research Question (Here is more help for members refining your question).
• Intended Audience (i.e. To Company X)
• The IB Number (Something in the format "abc123" (i.e. fjk932)
• Session (i.e. May 2023)
• Proposal word count and IA word count. (Note that the Executive...

Sometimes (normally in 8-mark questions) you will be asked to evaluate. This is about going beyond the insights you have made from doing your analysis (your Dr Tests). But let's make sure you are clear on the difference between analysis and evaluation. By analyzing in Business we mean giving your Defi­ni­tions, Expla­na­tions, Exam­ples and Development (making sure you have fully answered the question) (Doing the 'DEED'). And then, after you analysis is done, you go on to evaluate, to make sense of it for the reader. You are telling us, in clear terms, what we should think about the situation.

This is a bit like Theory of Knowledge because you are not only showing that you can think about things using the course theories, but also showing that you can think about things in a complicated (or complex, or advanced) way. You can contrast the results of two ways of appraising an investment opportunity for example and tell us which insights are most important for this...

1 Ask questions when you don't understand something and when you do. All of my classes are about questioning what we know, how we know it and how we change (and our actions change) as a result of knowing. So if your teacher introduces something in class that you don't get, stop them. Clarify.

If someone else offers a point of view that makes no sense, ask for clarification. One way I can tell that you're truly progressing is by the kinds of questions you're asking.

2 Participate in class discussions. Silence may be golden in some settings, but not in my classroom. By speaking up during class discussions two good things happen: I get to know you better and I get to give you a correction --we get the chance to show you something you didn't realize already. You might be passionate about the subject, but silent passion doesn't help much in my grade book.

3 Be a little bit selfish. If you believe that your success at school is important to your future (and I hope you do) make...

If you are completing the IB Diploma Program in May 2017, the official Theory of Knowledge essay titles you’ll be working with have been released. I've made some step-by-step help videos and other downloadable resources to help you with your essay if you'd like.

Click the blue button below to get full access to these.

And we have ToK Essay Facebook groups. We have one group just for ToK students and another one just for ToK teachers. We'd love to see you in there. The following are the official prescribed titles for the May 2017 session of Theory of Knowledge essay.

Your essay can be up to 1600 words in length. 

The May 2017 ToK Prescribed Essay Titles

1. “It is only knowledge produced with difficulty that we truly value.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

2. “Facts are needed to establish theories but theories are needed to make sense of facts.” Discuss this statement with reference to two areas...

The JAM structure is a simple, three-step framework you can use to improve the quality of your writing in IB Business Management. 

JAM stands for Justification, Analysis and Mini-conclusion. 

Since I first created this framework (way back in 2009) it's become very popular with IB schools around the world. It works really well because it helps you (and forces you) to do a couple of things that you wouldn't normally do, which can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your writing. It raises your grade because it forces you to show your thinking and mention why the tool or model is appropriate and then to also observe what the analysis has revealed.

Let's say you’ve chosen (as your IA question) to explore whether a restaurant should relocate from one shopping mall to another one. The second location is more popular, but also more expensive, so you'll need to analyze the opportunity in a few different ways. 

In the weakest IAs and EEs the student...

On this, the third of three posts to make sure you score full marks on your Economics Internal Assessments, I want to give you a detailed checklist you can use to check your own work. (Here is post one, Getting Started with your Econ IA and post two: the Econ IA Structure).

I have included what the IB says they expect for full marks, and translated that into actionable steps. If you do everything on the checklist your teacher will have to give you full marks.

This is up-to-date with the "new" IB Econ curriculum (first Assessment 2022). 

A: Diagrams (3 marks)

IB Explanation: This criterion assesses the extent to which the student is able to construct and explain diagrams.

IB Expectations: Relevant, accurate and correctly labelled diagram(s) are included, with a full explanation.

Checklist (to get full marks):

Drawing the diagram:

-You have fully labelled your x and y-axis (See the Structure for this here).

-You’ve chosen the most appropriate diagram (the one that best...

I have found that the biggest challenge my students are having, in terms of scoring the top marks in the Business IA, is related to their use of analytical tools.

(For a step-by-step explanation of everything you need to include in your Business IA, use this page.)

You have a Research Question and you’re trying to arrive at your answer. A very common mistake is that students do a lot of analysis, but they don’t connect it properly to the Research Question (RQ) or to their Answer (Ans).

I have wracked my brain to make this more straightforward and I’ve come up with the following diagram, which you can follow to make your IA analysis a more straightforward process. If you follow it, it should raise your performance in several aspects of the IA Business rubric.

By this point, you have chosen an appropriate RQ. if you aren’t sure about that, I recommend reading this article first (and follow the '4 tests' it advises to check your RQ).  So now you know that...

IB Economics General Websites

• Welker’s Wikinomics - A website created by an IB economics teacher containing useful IB lecture notes as well as a blog
• Tutor2U - A resource for AS, A2 and IB economics revision
• Biz/ed - A general resource for learning economics, listed by topic.
• Essentials of Economics - Summaries, online quizzes and case studies relating to the textbook “Essentials of Economics”
• Economic Policy Debate - Is a place for online debates regarding current controversial ideas in economics. For IB Econ students, it’s a good place to review key concepts and evaluate.
• Vizala.com - Has a lot of great economics data. It's a database for country, demographic, social, and economic information.  

Videos

• Khan academy has produced some great videos on Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and current issues in Econ Recommended
• Some really good video lessons from EconClassroom.com
• Paj Holden's YouTube page is also full of great IB...