Why Your Line of Inquiry Matters (A Lot)
- Think of the Line of Inquiry (LOI) as the foundation of your entire HLE. It’s not just your topic, it’s the question that guides everything: what you argue, what evidence you use, and how you structure your analysis.
- A weak LOI = a vague, directionless essay.
- A strong LOI = a focused, meaningful argument with literary depth.
- The IB isn’t interested in summaries or surface-level takes.
- They want you to explore how and why an author makes certain choices, and what those choices do.
- The LOI forces you to connect authorial technique to a rich, meaningful idea, while grounding it in the specific context of the text.
How to Build a Great LOI Structure
NoteHow / Why / To what extent + Author + Text + Technique or Aspect + Rich Idea → Clearly linked to an IB Concept
ExampleHow and why does Carol Ann Duffy in The World’s Wife reconsiders historical and mythical figures to subvert patriarchal perspectives? → Creativity
