After understanding the of the basics of the essay, your next step is to grasp how it is evaluated and marked, which is outlined in the assessment instrument. Your TOK teacher will give you a copy of this, or you can find it online in the subject guide.
The overall assessment objective of the essay is to answer the title in a clear, coherent, and critical way. To do this, the assessment instrument looks for five different skills.
Members of the site have access to much more support for the TOK assessments, including lesson presentations, real-world examples, and advice on making links to the course, such as via the key concepts. Join us in seconds here!
Step 1 – Understand the TOK essay rubric
1. Making links to TOK
The discussion within your TOK essay should be linked very effectively to the areas of knowledge. Most, TOK essays expect you to discuss two AOKs, which will provide you with the context to explore and answer the prescribed title you’ve chosen.
2. Understanding perspectives
Your TOK essay should show a clear awareness of different points of view, and should offer an evaluation of them. This means considering how different perspective might approach the question in different ways.
3. Offering an effective argument
The arguments within your TOK essay are clear and coherent, and are supported by strong examples.
This means expressing your opinions clearly, and supporting them with original and meaningful real-life situations.
4. Keeping discussions relevant
Your essay’s discussions should offer a ‘sustained focus’ on the title. This means that you should be able to pick out any section of your essay, and be able to identify what question it is answering.
5. Considering implications
Your essay needs to not just present and evaluate arguments, it also needs to say why these arguments are significant, and what their implications are.
After you have grasped the rubric, you are ready to move on to choosing your title. We provide guidance here.
A 3-minute guide to the TOK essay
Our three-minute explainer video goes over the basics of the TOK essay, such as assessment, word count and other practical details, perspectives, implications, and the role of real-world examples in justifying claims and arguments.
You’ll find more videos on this and other aspects of TOK here, and you can dive into much more depth via our free and premium webinars, here.
More support for the TOK essay
Make sure that your TOK teacher has given you access to all the documents and online material that support the essay. These include the TOK Subject Guide, the TOK essay rubric, and exemplar TOK essays (found in ‘MyIB’, which is accessible to teachers).
Make sure you go through our other pages on writing the TOK essay. You’ll find help on understanding what the is looking for, that works for you, what each of the should focus on, how to an effective TOK essay, and how to fill in your .
If your school is a member of theoryofknowledge.net, we have designed a series of lessons on the essay, with two formative assessment tasks. These will familiarize you with the rubric, constructing effective arguments, and how to deal with perspectives and implications. If you are signed into the site, you can access these lessons here.
You can also find out our thoughts on the TOK essay (and the TOK exhibition) in several webinars that we have delivered. You can see these webinars on this page of the site.
Subscribe to our free monthly TOK newsletter
Our newsletter, The Examined Life, delivers 8 thought-provoking real-world stories to your inbox, three of which we unpack in detail to challenge assumptions, introduce brilliant thinkers, and build a library of examples for your essay, exhibition, and UA portfolio.
It is the easiest way to stay connected to the ideas that matter most and develop the habits of authentic critical thinking. Subscribe here.