This extended essay vs internal assessment gives you a front to back comparison between the two assignments, so you never have to confuse them for the same thing ever again.
The difference between an Extended Essay and Internal Assessment is on length, grading, and the number of assignments. For IA, you’ll get guidance from your teacher, so it’s easy to score high marks. For EE, you’ll hold reflection sessions with your supervisor, but they can’t predict results.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- What an Extended Essay is
- What an Internal Assessment is
- The detailed difference between an Internal Assessment and an Extended Essay
Our goal here is to help you understand what the IB program expects from you as far as these two types of assignments are concerned.
What is an Extended Essay?
An Extended Essay is an assignment that requires independent research and it should be 4,000 words in length.
The assignment requires you to work on a topic of interest, which relates to one of the six subjects in the IB diploma program.
You may also take an interdisciplinary approach, which is common in World Studies Extended Essay.
You’ll have 10 months to work on an extended essay.
During this time, you’ll develop skills necessary to develop research questions, engage in individual research, communicate idea, and easily construct and defend your argument.
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External moderators will grade Extended Essays based on several criteria, with 34 being the maximum points awarded to the best EE. The criteria looks at:
- Focus and method
- Knowledge and understanding
- Critical thinking
- Presentation
- Engagement
What is IB Internal Assessment?
What is an Internal Assessment?
An IB Internal Assessment is an assignment evaluated and marked by your teacher.
Not only does each subject in the IB program includes an Internal Assessment, the assignment can be in the form of a commentary, an essay, or an oral presentation.
For example, the IB Economics IA requires that you write three commentaries or essays with a to-year period.
It’s possible to score top grades in IB Internal Assessment, particularly because your teacher will guide you through the process.
We’ve create an IB IA writing service to help you get the assignment completed fast. So if you don’t have enough time to dedicated to the task or you find your topic to be rather complex, you can get in touch with us for writing assistance.
The IB Internal Assessment contributes 20 to 30% of the evaluation grade.
The number can be as high as 50% for some courses. More importantly, you want to make sure you do well in your IAs because they contribute to your final grades.
IB EE vs IB IA: How the Two Assignments Compare
The table below shows a summary of the differences between an Extended Essay and an Internal Assessment:
| Extended Essay | Internal Assessment |
1. | Graded externally by staff hired by IB | Graded internally by your teacher and moderated externally by IB. |
2. | The word limit for an Extended Essay is 4,000 words. | The word count should not exceed 2,500 words. |
3. | You only need to write one Extended Essay. | You must do an IA for each of your subjects in HL and SL levels. |
4. | While you’ll hold reflection sessions with your supervisor, they can make grade predictions for IB Extended Essays. | Your teacher will guide you and help you score top grades. |
5. | EEs are strict. IB doesn’t allow you to retake an Extended Essay. So, you won’t get a diploma if you fail. | It’s easy to make up for poor scores by retaking the exam since IAs are usually at less stake. |
Conclusion
EE vs IA: Assessment
Your IB teacher is responsible for evaluating and grading your Internal Assessments. Your school will then send the IA to IB for external moderation.
More often than not IB externally moderates the Internal Assessments to make sure that teacher are fair in their grading.
What the examiners do is to adjust the scores to ensure students get the grades they deserve. This mostly applies in the case where a teacher graded an assignment either harshly or leniently.
The Extended Essay has a different assessment criterion. Your school will send it to IB for external moderation, where staff employed by IB will mark it based on the scale of 0 to 34. The score you receive will fall within the five bands of the IB EE grading.
- A: Student has produced work of an excellent standard
- B: The work submitted by the student is of good standard
- C: The Extended Essay on the topic is of satisfactory level
- D: IB student has produced work of mediocre standard
- E: The standard of work produced by the student is elementary
That’s it for the grading criteria of the IB Internal Assessment and the Extended Essay.
As we’ve seen, the IB has a rubric that it uses to grade both IA and EE.
In Internal Assessment, you’ll have more interaction with your teacher who will help you to shape your IA to higher grades.
It’s different with the Extended Essay. While you will have reflection sessions with your advisor to improve the EE, they don’t make the final grading decision.
As such, it’s hard for them to predict how many marks you will score.
EE vs IA: Subjects
You will do an Internal Assessment for each of the subjects you take in IB.
The IA assignment can be in the form of a research paper, oral presentation, social experiment, an essay, a lab report, or whatever format your teacher allows.
To be precise, you will more than likely write about 6 IA within the two-year period of your IB diploma course.
You’ll write only one Extended Essay during the entire 2-year IB diploma program.
You will write at most 4 drafts in between reflection sessions, and your supervisor will be there to assist you whenever you need help.
You’ll have 40 hours to work on your EE, so it’s best to start as early as now so that you don’t miss out the most important marks.
Since this is a long project, we suggest that you spend at least 30 hours doing research and polishing your sources and then invest the rest of the 10 hours writing the essay.
EE vs IA: Failure
When you think about how hard the IB program is, it’s okay to ask what would happen if you failed the EE and IA.
Note that the IA isn’t a higher stake assignment. The program allows you to make up for poor grades in the IA by making sure you do well in your other oral presentations, May exams, or the EE.
There’s no way to make up for the EE. You have to do the best you can to pass the essay.
Given that we’ve already addressed what happens if you fail your EE, you should at least try to get a D if you want to get a diploma after the 2-year period.
EE vs IA: Length
One of the clear differences between an IA and EE is on the length of the two assignment.
An Internal Assessment, which may be in the form of an essay or commentary, should not be more than 2,500 words.
The EE, which takes the format of an essay, has a required word count of 4,000 words.
Conclusion
We hope this guide has helped you to understand the difference between IB Internal Assessment and IB Extended Essay.
You must complete your Internal Assessments and the Extended Essays on time. If you fail to do so, you’ll be subject to disciplinary action by an IB coordinator and your instructor. The worst that can happen is the possibility of ejection from the IB Diploma Program.