Professional Documents
Culture Documents
IR Pre-assessment Checklist
IR Pre-assessment Checklist
1
“An issue is usually a concern or matter within a topic that causes controversy, disagreement or hardship, has causes and
consequences, and is usually a problem which can be solved with different courses of action. Within a global topic, an issue goes
beyond a local or national context.” – Coursework Handbook 2018
2
“When quoting directly, [the writer] must use quotation marks and avoid quoting extensively. Quotes count towards the word
count.” – Coursework Handbook 2018
3
For example, this might be a controversy between different global perspectives, a comparison of different national perspectives,
or inclusion of other relevant local and personal perspectives.
10 Does the report analyse consequences of the
issue? Are consequences compared in a way
that establishes the most important ones to
help formulate courses of action?
4
“Some candidates carry out primary research, particularly to explore different perspectives. Where they do so, they should
mention this in text; so that it is clear where/how the information has been gained. They may wish to put a note at the end of their
reference list or in a footnote, to give details such as date of interview. If candidates wish to include evidence of their primary
research, such as statistics, they can append this to the reference list, unless it is to be read and counted in the words allowed for
the IR.” — Examiner Report summer 2021
5
Most students use more than three sources of information and don’t have enough space to write evaluations of all of them, so
include written evaluations of the sources that are most important to your analysis and conclusions. Of course, you should also use
the same skills during your research to help you select all your sources, to avoid using poor-quality information.
23 Is the report between 1500 and 2000 words6
long (including quotes, the title, subheadings,
titles and words within charts/diagrams, but
excluding the list of works cited)? Is a word
count given?
6
“The strongest work … used the full available word count.” — Examiner Report, summer 2021
7
Cohesion is how the writing “sticks together” to make a whole. In a piece of writing with good cohesion one point leads to the next
in a way that steadily builds up an overall picture, story, or argument. It avoids making the reader uncomfortable with abrupt jumps
or irrelevant parts.