The Individual Oral at a Glance
The Individual Oral (IO) is your internal assessment for English B. It counts for 25% of your final grade at both SL and HL.
The IO is a spoken activity in three parts: a short prepared presentation, a follow-up discussion with your teacher on the same material, and a wider conversation that moves across course themes. The whole thing runs for 12–15 minutes, plus preparation time beforehand.
The assessment is not a test of what you know about a topic. It tests what you can do with English in real time: describe and interpret, build an argument, respond to questions, and keep a conversation moving naturally. A student who walks in having memorised polished sentences about climate change and a student who can engage flexibly with an unfamiliar image or passage are not the same thing, and the criteria reflect that.
The IO is recorded and marked by your teacher, then moderated by the IB. Your teacher knows the assessment criteria well, so there are no tricks to finding what they want: the criteria are published, and this guide explains them directly.