You may decide that you want to not do HL for certain courses. (This was my experience with IB History.)
I took English Lang & Lit HL as that was all my school offered. The Lit part of IB depends on who your teacher is. Mine was really adamant on choosing books that were not typical to an English classroom so I expanded my horizons. Before IB, it was expected to read all of the Western classics (as I am from North America), like To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, 1984, etc. There's nothing wrong with that except for the fact that it places an extreme limit on your literature studies since you're reading about, essentially, nothing more than "white issues". My teacher was an Ugandan educator refugee who was into exploring internationalism and post-colonialism in literature - which is exactly what the IB should be about. I ended up reading things like Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
I did appreciate the language part as we studied how words influence and affect the world around them. It definitely made me more conscious of what I was writing and how it might be interpreted. It also helped when it came to literary analysis.
Either way, no IB English course is good for a writer. Let me correct that: no IB course is good for a writer. Being a writer demands time, dedication, and imagination, and the IB requires all that and more. Once things get rolling, you will likely have no time for writing - or at least very little time, which onto results in writing you feel is mediocre or downright not-very-good. The IB is a nice diploma to have and I recommend you do it if you have a good IB program ahead of you, but keep in mind that it is extremely tough. There is lots of work to be done.
I think you will benefit from and find interest in IB English Lit, but I advise you not to have expectations of creative writing either as homework or otherwise. Especially in second year when you have oral examinations and the Written Tasks, time is of the essence and there is not a whole lot of it left to pursue passions. Still, it is a great experience and your formal writing will develop in wondrous ways!
i'm planning on doing the ib program in the future. however, it's 2 years away, so i think i have a bit of time before i start worrying about it. i trust that there are IB science programs as well?
Hey! IB just started a couple of weeks ago for me. It was just as Lavvie had mentioned - There'll be science fairs just as every other year has. CAS is quite demanding, ToK is manageable for me as it's just frequent discussions and presentations/essays.
"I wish we could all get along like we used to in middle school... I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy..." — Unnamed Girl from "Mean Girls"
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