 |
| "Your mouth is but a gaping hole." |
That, I think of many people.
But don't take it the wrong way; I never always mean it in the negative manner, though the phrasing may connote otherwise.
Ah, the beauty of English. What's that about a symbol, a denotation and a connotation again? My memory has been failing me so.
Lame jokes aside, I must say that acquiring a 'gaping hole' is essential towards survival in IB, though this does not necessarily mean that anything you say is harvested as gold.
Of course, quality is much more appreciated over quantity, so speaking out loud and frequently will not do you good if you have no substance in your speech and whatsoever.
I know, duh, right?
"This rule is applied in so many educational systems, it is almost redundant to mention it!" All right then. Instead of stating the obvious, let me just go on to share my take on the IBDP and how my experience has been so far.
Compared to the conventional A Levels route in Singapore, the IBDP definitely offers a more holistic education, specifically in terms of service and creativity. Sounds familiar? That's because the IBDP includes CAS (Creativity, Action and Service), a compulsory component in the Diploma Programme core curriculum. It is similar to the CCA component in the local school system, except that they are divided into three main categories.
Creativity - Arts, and other experiences that involve creative thinking
Action - Physical exertion contributing to a healthy lifestyle, complementing academic work elsewhere in the DP
Service - An unpaid and voluntary exchange that has a learning benefit for the student. The rights, dignity and autonomy of all those involved are respected.
(Information taken from IBO website)
We see that Creativity and Action are the closest to what we consider CCAs in local schools, whereas Service is reminiscent of the CIP that all secondary school students have to do in order to obtain 2 bonus points for the GCE O Levels.
However, can they really be compared on these bases?
My answer to that would be a no, because joining SJI International has opened my eyes to an amazingly wide variety of activity choices - there are so many different kinds of activities, each catering to a specific form of interest, and this is something that local schools lack in their system.
Of course, pardon me if I'm wrong in my generalisation, because I have after all only been in ONE secondary school and ONE tertiary education institution. Respectively Anglican High School and St Joseph's Institution International, my experiences there do certainly lead to the aforementioned statement.
In a local school, you get the boring set of activities to choose from - if you're in performing arts, it's most probably an orchestra, dance society or choir; if you're in a sports CCA, you have the mundane soccer, basketball, table tennis...; and if you're in a clubs and societies, you can almost predict an infocomm and a debate club.
However, in an international school, or maybe just SJII alone, you can find activities that you probably wouldn't even have thought of if you had graduated fresh from the local system!
Such examples include a Music Technology Club (you don't just appreciate music - you create it!), a diving club (how cool is that?) and an IB Revision Blog Team (where students gather to discuss and compile notes and upload them on a revision blog for the betterment of our academics)
Many clubs in my present school were founded by students themselves, and this is something I feel strongly about, because activities should always be led by students who have the passion for them - who else is a better choice than the student who worked to establish the activity club?
When teachers and adults in general say they want to let their children pursue their dreams and interests, we tend to view it as meaning a choice of career. However entering this school has made me realise that pursuing dreams and interests really does not have to be restricted to doing so through one's career - this pursuit can also be done during one's free time - even better, one can do so in the name of clocking in CAS hours!
Not that I did not realise this for the CCA system in schools, but the truth to me is that the choices back in a local school were so limited that there was no flexibility for the fullest potential of pursuing one's interest.
Personally, I adore singing and composing songs, both instrumental and lyrical. While the choir seems like a perfect choice for such an interest, the fact is that I do not fancy choral songs, so that CCA would have to be out.
In a local system, that would leave me with no other activities related to singing to choose from. In an IB school, though, you are still left with a handful of choices to leisurely pick from!
In SJII, there is the conventional choir, a folk songs club, and a musical theatre company, each exploring different genres of singing (as you may have guessed, choral, folk, and broadway!) This is something that I sadly cannot envision in a local school, reasons unknown.
If the mention of activities has gotten some of you excited, you may see the whole list of activities offered in SJII for a glimpse into what an international school has to offer.
Service is another aspect of CAS that is really empowering towards students in the sense that in many cases, students are expected to source for their own organisations to provide service to. They are not fed with opportunities from the school and hence are given a chance to hone their senses of responsibility and urgency (because often enough, we are working against a deadline) ... The service that we embark on is also very much often a long-term project culminating into many hours instead of numerous one-off activities (beach cleaning, newspaper collection, etc) that we often see in local systems. What I have to say to this is that the form of service international school students engage in are pretty much more meaningful than what the average local student does (note average - I acknowledge that some schools, too, send their students on long-term projects like ours) ... and this is something that I am extremely proud of.
Back in AHS I was in the Chinese Orchestra and the Speakers' Club, so unlike the uniformed groups like the Girl Guides, we didn't see a lot of opportunities to offer a helping hand to the community. When I received a list of my hours to be verified towards the end of 2013 I was rather disappointed in myself to see that I had so few hours completed under the Service section, whereas my friends in GG had clocked in easily twice or thrice of what I had. I questioned myself on whether this was due to my lack of compassion for society, which I personally don't believe is true, but eventually I decided that it was due to both lack of opportunity and lack of proactive effort on my part.
That's why now in SJII I am making a conscious effort, with the help of my school, to offer service as much as I can. Right now I return to my alma mater once a week to offer mentoring to juniors who need them, and I intend to volunteer at a hospital once or twice a week, depending on my workload.
Indeed, witnessing many other students in my current school step up to do sharings on various service projects that they have embarked on has fueled my desire to serve the society in all ways possible. I wonder if I ever felt that way in a local school?
Please also note that my generalisations can at most extend to international schools and hence cannot be applied to institutions like ASC(I) and SOTA which offer the same programme.
Before I get insults hurled at me for presenting what others may feel is a one-sided argument, I need to make it clear that while my stand is strong regarding holistic education, I acknowledge that international schools can never overtake local schools in terms of academic rigour.
Now, close friends of mine will know how much exactly I value learning and knowledge, and often enough I find myself wondering if I have made a right decision to enter an international school when I could have been learning more in a local school. To be honest, I have no idea what my answer is, but using a utilitarian approach I can say that the right school is the one that allows me to pursue my ideal university and course. So I guess, I will never really know my answer until I receive my results next year.
But that's not important - what's important is that we now review the academic aspect of local and international schools (which is the very purpose of today's post)
As per abovementioned, local schools are definitely leading in terms of academic results and this is something international schools might not be able to catch up with in the near future. This is inevitable because international schools face many transfers due to the fluid nature of these students' residence. The academic syllabus has to be structured such as catching up will not be a problem for these students and therefore we will have to lay back in terms of academic stress.
Bear in mind that this does not mean that quality of education is lower in international schools! International school students will agree that the quality of education in their educational institutions are high, due to small teacher:student ratios and standards of school facilities. In the average JC we can have about 150 students in a single lecture hall for the same lesson, a number which represents the entirety of a single grade/cohort in SJII. The average number of student per class in the latter is 15 as opposed to 150 students, and the cohort population is 150 as opposed to 600. This is almost equivalent to the entire cohort of SJII G12 sitting for the same lesson at the same time!
Having settled into the international school for a year now, the thought of sharing a lecture hall with more than a hundred other students with no attention from the lecturer is certainly a frightful thought to harbor. Of course I can have my doubts addressed in a tutorial session when the time comes, but being accustomed to have 'tutorials' everyday, I am not sure whether such an arrangement would be beneficial to my learning - however I have no reason to doubt it, seeing that our local system has produced so many brilliant scholars, doctors and lawyers.
On that note, I would also like to share on how an international school, in my opinion, really goes out to cultivate your talents and potentials, especially that in the field of arts. Never before in my life have I ever seen so many talented painters and musicians in a single school, and seeing that we have art galleries, auction sessions, and countless of indie bands in SJII, I must say that the culture in this school is very accommodating towards young aspiring individuals like us! This means that our school has seen many graduates returning as accomplished artists and musicians, apart from lawyers, economists and doctors.
Seeing that I am neither an artist nor a musician (subject-wise, at least), I don't have a lot left to comment because all I know are through observation, sadly.
Before I continue rambling on, I should really cover the fundamentals of the IBDP - The curriculum. This information can easily be pulled out from the net, specifically the IBO website, so do yourself a favour and click on the link provided if you are interested in learning more about the IBDP curriculum!
(Update: I found the perfect infographic on epigami.sg comparing Poly, As, and IB, so my fellow Singaporeans - click here if you want a detailed analysis of all three qualifications!)
Seeing that I have already embarked on this rigorous post-writing, I shall just provide the salient points right here.
A total of 7 subjects are taken for the IBDP:
(1) First Language
(2) Second Language
(3) Mathematics
(4) Science
(5) Humanities
(6) Another Science/Humanities
(7) Theory of Knowledge (TOK)
Highlighted above are the subjects that are of interest.
The second language component is a really refreshing idea to me, especially as an individual who loves learning languages. I like how the curriculum implements a compulsory second language to ensure that its students graduate effectively bilingual, a common vision shared with MM Lee. The difference between this and the implementation in the A Levels is that we are still required to take a second language even if we have attained a pass in the GCE O Levels Higher Mother Tongue. Chinese students who do not have the local qualifications will be required by the MOE to take Chinese, whereas those with the qualifications will be allowed to learn another language such as Spanish.
On my side, I did meet the requirements for learning another language and initially I had wanted to learn Spanish, so as to add another language to my toolbox. Just imagine! All asian languages and suddenly a European one!
However I decided in the end not to do Spanish Ab Initio as I (cowardly) wanted to ensure a 7 for SL Chinese. I am, though, learning Spanish independently using both books and DuoLingo so no regrets!
For those who might be rather lost in the discussion now, you might be wondering - what exactly is SL? Basically, SL stands for Standard Level whereas HL (which I haven't used yet) stands for Higher Level. This is similar to the H1, H2 and H3 standards in the A Levels.
For subjects (1) to (6), we have to split them equally into Standard and Higher Level. A generalisation would be that HL is similar to H2 whereas SL is similar to H1, but personally this is something I do not agree with.
For the Maths and Sciences, maybe that indeed would be the case - HL Mathematics is at the same standard as H2 Math, and SL Mathematics is at the same standard as H1 Math.
However for the humanities, there can never really be a tight comparison because of the fluid nature of what you can learn in these subjects.
From what I observe, I presume that HL Geography and History are slightly higher than H2 standard, whereas HL Econs would be the same as H2; SL Econs would be in between H1 and H2.
Please take my opinions with a pinch of salt though, because I take none of these subjects, though my close friends do.
TOK is a really complex subject to explain, but a good description would be that it is similar to the Knowledge and Inquiry subject in the A Levels, which I believe is an advanced version of PW. In TOK we learn about learning - how do we know what we know? It sounds like a really sketchy subject, and while the content can be really interesting at times, my verdict is that TOK is good for self-enrichment in one's free time, but not so as a subject. The implications are that student who dislike the subject would not do well for it, and this is extremely risky because the only formal assessments for this particular subject come in the form of a single essay and a single oral presentation, which is sent to the IB for moderation. This is why many people like to look at TOK as more of a 'project' than a subject. For more information, click here.
One more thing worth taking note of, that is outside of the subject combination is this thing called an Extended Essay (EE). Every IBDP student is required to submit a 4000 (maximum) word essay based on one of the six subjects (from (1) to (6)) that they study, which can be likened to an individual research project. In the Sciences, we come up with a research question and basically carry out experiments to find the answer to it. The same applies to Math, but the content tends to be more theoretical. I'd like to think of it as an extended IA (what is an IA? Scroll down to find out!) ... Once again, for clarification, click on this link.
The curriculum being addressed, I shall now talk about the intricacies of the IBDP, or more aptly-put, the unique thing about taking the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme.
Remember the photo at the very top of the post, captioned "Your mouth is but a gaping hole."? Well, I certainly did not put that in for fun! In all seriousness this post was inspired by the sudden revelation that the IBDP requires a lot of oral communication, whether in the form of commentaries, debates, presentations or conversation in general.
That's right. To succeed in IB, you need to have a 'gaping hole' (please remember what I said about quantity vs quality though).
In English alone we have our IOC (Individual Oral Commentary) and FOA (Further Oral Assessment), and in TOK we have our very own delightful TOK Presentation. Not to mention the Group 4 project that we also have to work on and present in an hour-long session!
I am not sure how I should explain to students in local systems what an IOC and FOA is, but I'll try my best:
An IOC is a 12-15 minute long commentary in which you speak about prepared extracts (mine was MacBeth and Wilfred Owen Poetry) to show your understanding and appreciation of the given literature.
That's right guys. You'll have to speak for a minimum of 10 minutes straight without interruption, following which you will have to answer a series of questions posed by your teacher. This might be seen as a huge hindrance to students who dislike speaking, but hey, that's why I mentioned a gaping hole, right?
An FOA is an oral presentation that can take various forms - maybe a debate speech or a simple sharing. The topic for the oral presentation must come from the core syllabus, or otherwise the choice of topic for the IOC.
I think compared to the GCE A Levels, we do so much more speaking than the average student, who probably only speaks officially for the PW OP. Again, please correct me if I am wrong here.
The vibrance of an international school environment also makes its students feisty little individuals who speak passionately of things they love and hate. We also see that because of the teachings in school, many of the students do not actually speak Singlish and therefore speak in fuller sentences that sound more coherent and intellectual. This is extremely beneficial for potential interviews by universities because the students are used to speaking proper English in both formal and informal settings, so most of the time, the conversational part of the interview goes as a breeze for international students. As an international school student who has come from a local secondary school, I am very comfortable with code-switching from Singlish at home to proper English in a social situation, and I find that this has helped me extensively on my communication skills as a whole. Not only that, but I realise that my command on English is also getting stronger!
This gaping hole on IB students' faces can be interpreted both negatively and positively. I'd guess that in the eyes of a local school system, these students will be seen as overly 'loud' and liberal in their thoughts and words, and from what I see this certainly can be true to a certain extent, but then again with all the benefits that come with it, and the fact that it is essential for IB survival, I guess a gaping hole is good after all.
That said, another aspect of the IBDP that I fancy is the Internal Assessment. Every subject taken in the IBDP has to be assessed internally in different forms.
For the Sciences, we have our laboratory experiments, split into three components:
Design - The formulation of a research question and its resultant experiment procedure
Data Collection and Processing - The collection of raw data through doing the experiment and processing it appropriately (through calculations, graphing...) to obtain an answer that addresses the research question
Conclusion and Evaluation - The extended answer towards the research question with justifications and suggestions for the improvement with regards to flaws in the experiment (incoherent data, null hypothesis, etc)
Of course, this is very similar to the SPA in secondary schools, for which we complete experiments and also towards the end, write a design for a certain topic. What is different though, is that we do our Science IAs on a regular basis, throughout the year, which are formally assessed and included in our overall grades. SPA occurs probably once or twice a year, and is only formally assessed towards the end of the 4 years in secondary school. This means that the grades we get for the latter is set at that one sitting, whereas those for the IBDP are more flexible because we get to choose 3 best marks from each component to be sent to the IBO, out of the many, many assessments that we would have done throughout the course of two years.
In other subjects such as Mathematics, we have what we call 'Mathematics Exploration', the syllabus for which has recently been changed. In the current one, students do a short written paper of about 1000 words to explore an area of Mathematics. Most of the time, students like to do modelling (of diseases, population growth, trajectory...) but sometimes we see others working towards proving a certain formula or theorem.
What I absolutely adore about our Math IAs is that we get to choose anything to work on, as long as the central topic is within the syllabus. This means great flexibility and hence allows for us to work on where our interests truly lie!
For example, a student interested in tennis could try to model the trajectory of a tennis ball (or shuttlecock, for badminton players) and find a general equation that describes the propagation of the object. Students who prefer to work with the theoretical aspects of Math can choose to discuss the lemmas of certain theorems (or even formulate a new one, for those math geniuses out there) ... The choices are simply endless.
IAs for the Languages are almost intuitive - simply written tasks or oral presentations on a certain topic. Once again, the format and content of what we want to do is entirely up to the students, which is so accommodating as opposed to say, the set topics for English Compositions!
I remember feeling so frazzled over memorizing the structures for certain essay formats like speeches, formal letters and magazine articles because we will never know what might come out. But here in the IBDP, we never have to worry about such a thing because we get to choose anything to do.
For those interested to know (or you could just check in the FAQ Section), I take SL Psychology as my humanities subject, which is something I highly doubt will be available if you chose a JC route. The IA for this particular subject is something that I am extremely looking forward to, because it deals with conducting experiments! In SL Psychology, we are not allowed to come up with our own experiments, which is saddening because I am one to fancy taking charge of my own learning. Henceforth, designing my own experiments is the way to go if I ever want to enhance my learning!
Having said so much, I guess my conclusion would be that I am currently very satisfied with my choice of education. For students who want a fun learning experience (sorry A Level dudes and dudettes) , the IB is for you. However students who want solid fundamentals on knowledge and theories, the A Levels is the perfectest choice. Writing this post has made me appreciate the IBDP even more, and it is certainly an honour to be able to be studying in SJII alongside my wonderful classmates...
My patience with my own writing is wearing thin and it is almost time for me to bid goodbye to this post and say hello to revision. Considering that I will always be here (figuratively), do feel free to suggest any other aspects of the curriculum that I should share my opinion on so that I may edit this post in the future. Contact me through Ask.fm maybe?
xoxo
Valerie
(Information taken from IBO website)
We see that Creativity and Action are the closest to what we consider CCAs in local schools, whereas Service is reminiscent of the CIP that all secondary school students have to do in order to obtain 2 bonus points for the GCE O Levels.
However, can they really be compared on these bases?
My answer to that would be a no, because joining SJI International has opened my eyes to an amazingly wide variety of activity choices - there are so many different kinds of activities, each catering to a specific form of interest, and this is something that local schools lack in their system.
Of course, pardon me if I'm wrong in my generalisation, because I have after all only been in ONE secondary school and ONE tertiary education institution. Respectively Anglican High School and St Joseph's Institution International, my experiences there do certainly lead to the aforementioned statement.
In a local school, you get the boring set of activities to choose from - if you're in performing arts, it's most probably an orchestra, dance society or choir; if you're in a sports CCA, you have the mundane soccer, basketball, table tennis...; and if you're in a clubs and societies, you can almost predict an infocomm and a debate club.
However, in an international school, or maybe just SJII alone, you can find activities that you probably wouldn't even have thought of if you had graduated fresh from the local system!
Such examples include a Music Technology Club (you don't just appreciate music - you create it!), a diving club (how cool is that?) and an IB Revision Blog Team (where students gather to discuss and compile notes and upload them on a revision blog for the betterment of our academics)
Many clubs in my present school were founded by students themselves, and this is something I feel strongly about, because activities should always be led by students who have the passion for them - who else is a better choice than the student who worked to establish the activity club?
When teachers and adults in general say they want to let their children pursue their dreams and interests, we tend to view it as meaning a choice of career. However entering this school has made me realise that pursuing dreams and interests really does not have to be restricted to doing so through one's career - this pursuit can also be done during one's free time - even better, one can do so in the name of clocking in CAS hours!
Not that I did not realise this for the CCA system in schools, but the truth to me is that the choices back in a local school were so limited that there was no flexibility for the fullest potential of pursuing one's interest.
Personally, I adore singing and composing songs, both instrumental and lyrical. While the choir seems like a perfect choice for such an interest, the fact is that I do not fancy choral songs, so that CCA would have to be out.
In a local system, that would leave me with no other activities related to singing to choose from. In an IB school, though, you are still left with a handful of choices to leisurely pick from!
In SJII, there is the conventional choir, a folk songs club, and a musical theatre company, each exploring different genres of singing (as you may have guessed, choral, folk, and broadway!) This is something that I sadly cannot envision in a local school, reasons unknown.
If the mention of activities has gotten some of you excited, you may see the whole list of activities offered in SJII for a glimpse into what an international school has to offer.
Service is another aspect of CAS that is really empowering towards students in the sense that in many cases, students are expected to source for their own organisations to provide service to. They are not fed with opportunities from the school and hence are given a chance to hone their senses of responsibility and urgency (because often enough, we are working against a deadline) ... The service that we embark on is also very much often a long-term project culminating into many hours instead of numerous one-off activities (beach cleaning, newspaper collection, etc) that we often see in local systems. What I have to say to this is that the form of service international school students engage in are pretty much more meaningful than what the average local student does (note average - I acknowledge that some schools, too, send their students on long-term projects like ours) ... and this is something that I am extremely proud of.
Back in AHS I was in the Chinese Orchestra and the Speakers' Club, so unlike the uniformed groups like the Girl Guides, we didn't see a lot of opportunities to offer a helping hand to the community. When I received a list of my hours to be verified towards the end of 2013 I was rather disappointed in myself to see that I had so few hours completed under the Service section, whereas my friends in GG had clocked in easily twice or thrice of what I had. I questioned myself on whether this was due to my lack of compassion for society, which I personally don't believe is true, but eventually I decided that it was due to both lack of opportunity and lack of proactive effort on my part.
That's why now in SJII I am making a conscious effort, with the help of my school, to offer service as much as I can. Right now I return to my alma mater once a week to offer mentoring to juniors who need them, and I intend to volunteer at a hospital once or twice a week, depending on my workload.
Indeed, witnessing many other students in my current school step up to do sharings on various service projects that they have embarked on has fueled my desire to serve the society in all ways possible. I wonder if I ever felt that way in a local school?
Please also note that my generalisations can at most extend to international schools and hence cannot be applied to institutions like ASC(I) and SOTA which offer the same programme.
Before I get insults hurled at me for presenting what others may feel is a one-sided argument, I need to make it clear that while my stand is strong regarding holistic education, I acknowledge that international schools can never overtake local schools in terms of academic rigour.
Now, close friends of mine will know how much exactly I value learning and knowledge, and often enough I find myself wondering if I have made a right decision to enter an international school when I could have been learning more in a local school. To be honest, I have no idea what my answer is, but using a utilitarian approach I can say that the right school is the one that allows me to pursue my ideal university and course. So I guess, I will never really know my answer until I receive my results next year.
But that's not important - what's important is that we now review the academic aspect of local and international schools (which is the very purpose of today's post)
As per abovementioned, local schools are definitely leading in terms of academic results and this is something international schools might not be able to catch up with in the near future. This is inevitable because international schools face many transfers due to the fluid nature of these students' residence. The academic syllabus has to be structured such as catching up will not be a problem for these students and therefore we will have to lay back in terms of academic stress.
Bear in mind that this does not mean that quality of education is lower in international schools! International school students will agree that the quality of education in their educational institutions are high, due to small teacher:student ratios and standards of school facilities. In the average JC we can have about 150 students in a single lecture hall for the same lesson, a number which represents the entirety of a single grade/cohort in SJII. The average number of student per class in the latter is 15 as opposed to 150 students, and the cohort population is 150 as opposed to 600. This is almost equivalent to the entire cohort of SJII G12 sitting for the same lesson at the same time!
Having settled into the international school for a year now, the thought of sharing a lecture hall with more than a hundred other students with no attention from the lecturer is certainly a frightful thought to harbor. Of course I can have my doubts addressed in a tutorial session when the time comes, but being accustomed to have 'tutorials' everyday, I am not sure whether such an arrangement would be beneficial to my learning - however I have no reason to doubt it, seeing that our local system has produced so many brilliant scholars, doctors and lawyers.
On that note, I would also like to share on how an international school, in my opinion, really goes out to cultivate your talents and potentials, especially that in the field of arts. Never before in my life have I ever seen so many talented painters and musicians in a single school, and seeing that we have art galleries, auction sessions, and countless of indie bands in SJII, I must say that the culture in this school is very accommodating towards young aspiring individuals like us! This means that our school has seen many graduates returning as accomplished artists and musicians, apart from lawyers, economists and doctors.
Seeing that I am neither an artist nor a musician (subject-wise, at least), I don't have a lot left to comment because all I know are through observation, sadly.
Before I continue rambling on, I should really cover the fundamentals of the IBDP - The curriculum. This information can easily be pulled out from the net, specifically the IBO website, so do yourself a favour and click on the link provided if you are interested in learning more about the IBDP curriculum!
(Update: I found the perfect infographic on epigami.sg comparing Poly, As, and IB, so my fellow Singaporeans - click here if you want a detailed analysis of all three qualifications!)
Seeing that I have already embarked on this rigorous post-writing, I shall just provide the salient points right here.
A total of 7 subjects are taken for the IBDP:
(1) First Language
(2) Second Language
(3) Mathematics
(4) Science
(5) Humanities
(6) Another Science/Humanities
(7) Theory of Knowledge (TOK)
Highlighted above are the subjects that are of interest.
The second language component is a really refreshing idea to me, especially as an individual who loves learning languages. I like how the curriculum implements a compulsory second language to ensure that its students graduate effectively bilingual, a common vision shared with MM Lee. The difference between this and the implementation in the A Levels is that we are still required to take a second language even if we have attained a pass in the GCE O Levels Higher Mother Tongue. Chinese students who do not have the local qualifications will be required by the MOE to take Chinese, whereas those with the qualifications will be allowed to learn another language such as Spanish.
On my side, I did meet the requirements for learning another language and initially I had wanted to learn Spanish, so as to add another language to my toolbox. Just imagine! All asian languages and suddenly a European one!
However I decided in the end not to do Spanish Ab Initio as I (cowardly) wanted to ensure a 7 for SL Chinese. I am, though, learning Spanish independently using both books and DuoLingo so no regrets!
For those who might be rather lost in the discussion now, you might be wondering - what exactly is SL? Basically, SL stands for Standard Level whereas HL (which I haven't used yet) stands for Higher Level. This is similar to the H1, H2 and H3 standards in the A Levels.
For subjects (1) to (6), we have to split them equally into Standard and Higher Level. A generalisation would be that HL is similar to H2 whereas SL is similar to H1, but personally this is something I do not agree with.
For the Maths and Sciences, maybe that indeed would be the case - HL Mathematics is at the same standard as H2 Math, and SL Mathematics is at the same standard as H1 Math.
However for the humanities, there can never really be a tight comparison because of the fluid nature of what you can learn in these subjects.
From what I observe, I presume that HL Geography and History are slightly higher than H2 standard, whereas HL Econs would be the same as H2; SL Econs would be in between H1 and H2.
Please take my opinions with a pinch of salt though, because I take none of these subjects, though my close friends do.
TOK is a really complex subject to explain, but a good description would be that it is similar to the Knowledge and Inquiry subject in the A Levels, which I believe is an advanced version of PW. In TOK we learn about learning - how do we know what we know? It sounds like a really sketchy subject, and while the content can be really interesting at times, my verdict is that TOK is good for self-enrichment in one's free time, but not so as a subject. The implications are that student who dislike the subject would not do well for it, and this is extremely risky because the only formal assessments for this particular subject come in the form of a single essay and a single oral presentation, which is sent to the IB for moderation. This is why many people like to look at TOK as more of a 'project' than a subject. For more information, click here.
One more thing worth taking note of, that is outside of the subject combination is this thing called an Extended Essay (EE). Every IBDP student is required to submit a 4000 (maximum) word essay based on one of the six subjects (from (1) to (6)) that they study, which can be likened to an individual research project. In the Sciences, we come up with a research question and basically carry out experiments to find the answer to it. The same applies to Math, but the content tends to be more theoretical. I'd like to think of it as an extended IA (what is an IA? Scroll down to find out!) ... Once again, for clarification, click on this link.
The curriculum being addressed, I shall now talk about the intricacies of the IBDP, or more aptly-put, the unique thing about taking the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme.
Remember the photo at the very top of the post, captioned "Your mouth is but a gaping hole."? Well, I certainly did not put that in for fun! In all seriousness this post was inspired by the sudden revelation that the IBDP requires a lot of oral communication, whether in the form of commentaries, debates, presentations or conversation in general.
That's right. To succeed in IB, you need to have a 'gaping hole' (please remember what I said about quantity vs quality though).
In English alone we have our IOC (Individual Oral Commentary) and FOA (Further Oral Assessment), and in TOK we have our very own delightful TOK Presentation. Not to mention the Group 4 project that we also have to work on and present in an hour-long session!
I am not sure how I should explain to students in local systems what an IOC and FOA is, but I'll try my best:
An IOC is a 12-15 minute long commentary in which you speak about prepared extracts (mine was MacBeth and Wilfred Owen Poetry) to show your understanding and appreciation of the given literature.
That's right guys. You'll have to speak for a minimum of 10 minutes straight without interruption, following which you will have to answer a series of questions posed by your teacher. This might be seen as a huge hindrance to students who dislike speaking, but hey, that's why I mentioned a gaping hole, right?
An FOA is an oral presentation that can take various forms - maybe a debate speech or a simple sharing. The topic for the oral presentation must come from the core syllabus, or otherwise the choice of topic for the IOC.
I think compared to the GCE A Levels, we do so much more speaking than the average student, who probably only speaks officially for the PW OP. Again, please correct me if I am wrong here.
The vibrance of an international school environment also makes its students feisty little individuals who speak passionately of things they love and hate. We also see that because of the teachings in school, many of the students do not actually speak Singlish and therefore speak in fuller sentences that sound more coherent and intellectual. This is extremely beneficial for potential interviews by universities because the students are used to speaking proper English in both formal and informal settings, so most of the time, the conversational part of the interview goes as a breeze for international students. As an international school student who has come from a local secondary school, I am very comfortable with code-switching from Singlish at home to proper English in a social situation, and I find that this has helped me extensively on my communication skills as a whole. Not only that, but I realise that my command on English is also getting stronger!
This gaping hole on IB students' faces can be interpreted both negatively and positively. I'd guess that in the eyes of a local school system, these students will be seen as overly 'loud' and liberal in their thoughts and words, and from what I see this certainly can be true to a certain extent, but then again with all the benefits that come with it, and the fact that it is essential for IB survival, I guess a gaping hole is good after all.
That said, another aspect of the IBDP that I fancy is the Internal Assessment. Every subject taken in the IBDP has to be assessed internally in different forms.
For the Sciences, we have our laboratory experiments, split into three components:
Design - The formulation of a research question and its resultant experiment procedure
Data Collection and Processing - The collection of raw data through doing the experiment and processing it appropriately (through calculations, graphing...) to obtain an answer that addresses the research question
Conclusion and Evaluation - The extended answer towards the research question with justifications and suggestions for the improvement with regards to flaws in the experiment (incoherent data, null hypothesis, etc)
Of course, this is very similar to the SPA in secondary schools, for which we complete experiments and also towards the end, write a design for a certain topic. What is different though, is that we do our Science IAs on a regular basis, throughout the year, which are formally assessed and included in our overall grades. SPA occurs probably once or twice a year, and is only formally assessed towards the end of the 4 years in secondary school. This means that the grades we get for the latter is set at that one sitting, whereas those for the IBDP are more flexible because we get to choose 3 best marks from each component to be sent to the IBO, out of the many, many assessments that we would have done throughout the course of two years.
In other subjects such as Mathematics, we have what we call 'Mathematics Exploration', the syllabus for which has recently been changed. In the current one, students do a short written paper of about 1000 words to explore an area of Mathematics. Most of the time, students like to do modelling (of diseases, population growth, trajectory...) but sometimes we see others working towards proving a certain formula or theorem.
What I absolutely adore about our Math IAs is that we get to choose anything to work on, as long as the central topic is within the syllabus. This means great flexibility and hence allows for us to work on where our interests truly lie!
For example, a student interested in tennis could try to model the trajectory of a tennis ball (or shuttlecock, for badminton players) and find a general equation that describes the propagation of the object. Students who prefer to work with the theoretical aspects of Math can choose to discuss the lemmas of certain theorems (or even formulate a new one, for those math geniuses out there) ... The choices are simply endless.
IAs for the Languages are almost intuitive - simply written tasks or oral presentations on a certain topic. Once again, the format and content of what we want to do is entirely up to the students, which is so accommodating as opposed to say, the set topics for English Compositions!
I remember feeling so frazzled over memorizing the structures for certain essay formats like speeches, formal letters and magazine articles because we will never know what might come out. But here in the IBDP, we never have to worry about such a thing because we get to choose anything to do.
For those interested to know (or you could just check in the FAQ Section), I take SL Psychology as my humanities subject, which is something I highly doubt will be available if you chose a JC route. The IA for this particular subject is something that I am extremely looking forward to, because it deals with conducting experiments! In SL Psychology, we are not allowed to come up with our own experiments, which is saddening because I am one to fancy taking charge of my own learning. Henceforth, designing my own experiments is the way to go if I ever want to enhance my learning!
Having said so much, I guess my conclusion would be that I am currently very satisfied with my choice of education. For students who want a fun learning experience (sorry A Level dudes and dudettes) , the IB is for you. However students who want solid fundamentals on knowledge and theories, the A Levels is the perfectest choice. Writing this post has made me appreciate the IBDP even more, and it is certainly an honour to be able to be studying in SJII alongside my wonderful classmates...
My patience with my own writing is wearing thin and it is almost time for me to bid goodbye to this post and say hello to revision. Considering that I will always be here (figuratively), do feel free to suggest any other aspects of the curriculum that I should share my opinion on so that I may edit this post in the future. Contact me through Ask.fm maybe?
xoxo
Valerie
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