Use of Literary Terminology by Diploma Students on the IB Program

This study investigates the use of literary terminology in student poetry commentaries. 40 upper secondary school literature students on the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme are asked to note down their obser-vations on a previously unseen poem, ”Utvandrarna” by Swedish poet Kjell Espmark (1972). The aim of the study is to contribute knowledge about how students use literary terminology, both by investigating a new setting, the IB programme, and by using commentaries on poetry rather than prose. The study investigates the questions ”To what extent do IB students use literary terminology in their comments of previously unseen poetry, and what literary terms are used?” and ”In what different ways is literary terminology used in the students’ commentaries?”. The method used is quantitative and qualitative analysis of the empirical material. The result shows that the IB poetry commentaries contain on average nine literary terms each. The literary terms are first and foremost used to comment specific stylistic aspects of the poem, such as its stucture, imagery, repetition and tone. Literary ter-minology is also partly used for citation and text binding. Very few instances of incorrect use of terminology are found. The conclusion drawn is that literary terminology is more widely used by IB students than by previously investigated groups of students in a Swedish setting