Introduction

All Extended Essays are marked by an external examiner. All the external examiner sees is the final copy of your Essay together with the completed Reflections on planning and progress form, EE/RPPF. Based solely on this information, it is the external examiner's task to determine how the Essay matches up to the five assessment criteria and to award a total mark out of a maximum of 34. In one sense the way in which the essay is marked is not directly your teacher's concern as the assessment is external. However your teacher is required to submit a predicted grade for your EE to the IB so will need to have an informed opinion as to the quality of your work.

The total mark out of 34 is translated into a grade from A to E. The grade descriptors which govern how the grade boundaries are decided are given on page 107 of the Extended Essay guide. It is worth considering the descriptor for the top boundary of Grade A .

Clearly not everyone will achieve this standard, but it is the benchmark that you should be aiming for.

This section on assessment looks at the importance of the Reflections on planning and progress three formal reflection sessions, the last of which is the viva voce as these affect Criterion E. It also looks at how the different grade boundaries of Excellent, Good, Satisfactory, Mediocre and Elementary are determined. Finally it looks in detail at all the five Assessment Criteria individually and gives advice and guidance (with examples) as to how to maximise your marks for each criterion.