Planning your answer

Plan before you write: Planning (planifier) is the two-minute outline you jot down before writing your Paper 1 — Writing answer. The SL paper offers three tasks and you do only one, so first you read all three, choose the one you can write best, and pick the most appropriate text type. Then you decide the audience and register, the two or three points you'll develop and a few useful words. A plan is what earns Criterion B (Message), because it gives your answer a clear, organised shape instead of rambling prose.

planifier / le plan

to plan / the plan — your quick outline before writing

le type de texte

the text type — blog, letter, email, article, speech… (you must choose the right one)

le destinataire

the audience — who you are writing to (it fixes the register)

le registre

the register — formal (vous) or informal (tu), set by the audience and purpose

l'idée clé

a key idea — one of the points you develop

le connecteur

a connector / linking word (d'abord, ensuite, c'est pourquoi…)

Two minutes, big payoff: Spending two minutes choosing your task and planning feels like lost time — it isn't. A plan stops you drying up halfway, keeps your points in order, and directly lifts Criterion B. Examiners reward an answer that is clearly organised and written in the right text type for the right audience.

What goes in a good plan: A useful plan has five things, not paragraphs of prose. Note them in abbreviations — a word or two each. The table below is the checklist your plan should cover before you write your first sentence.

Five lines, no sentences: Type de texte · destinataire/registre · 2–3 idées · accroche/fin · vocabulaire. Your plan is five short lines, written in note form — never full sentences. It's scaffolding for you, not text for the examiner. Choosing the right text type for the audience also protects Criterion C.

Four moves to a plan: Building a plan is the same four moves every time: choose & decode the task, brainstorm your points, order them, then note the vocabulary. Do it on scrap paper in the first couple of minutes, before any real writing.

Order matters as much as ideas: Two strong points in a muddled order read worse than two ordinary points in a clear order. The Order step is where you protect Criterion B — make your reader follow you from opening to close without getting lost.

A four-line plan, worked through: Here's the plan stage for a real-style task, line by line — the notes you'd scribble before writing the blog post itself. The task uses the exact IB instruction style (« Réalisez une des tâches suivantes… le type de texte le plus approprié », three text types offered). Tap Voir la traduction for the English explanation, or 🔊 to hear the French.

What the plan turns into — and how it scores: From those four plan lines, the answer almost writes itself. A strong response on this task would: (A — Langue) use varied, accurate French and connectors (« d'abord… ensuite… c'est pourquoi… ») rather than short, flat sentences; (B — Message) develop each of the three planned points with an example and keep them in a clear order, staying inside 450–600 mots; (C — Compréhension conceptuelle) respect the blog conventions chosen in line 1 (a title, addressing the reader directly, a warm close) and the informal register chosen in line 2. Skip the plan and you typically lose B (rambling, undeveloped points) and C (wrong or generic text type).

Four lines is a whole plan: Notice the plan is just four short lines — text type, register, three points, vocabulary — and yet it fixes every big decision the three marking criteria reward. Build this on scrap paper first and your Criterion B and C marks are half-won before you start writing.

Good planning vs costly mistakes: The marks lost around planning are rarely about French grammar — they come from skipping the plan, piling up shallow points, or planning content that ignores the chosen text type and register. Here's the contrast.

Depth beats quantity: Two or three points developed with examples beat six points mentioned and dropped. When you plan, ask of each idea: can I write three sentences on this? If not, cut it — that protects Criterion B. And check your register matches the audience: an authority figure needs vous, a friend needs tu.