Below are a few tips to consider avoiding when writing/planning your extended essay:

1. Procrastination

Working a little bit every day over the summer is going to be key when putting together your extended essay. Ensure that you are getting on top of things and making sure you are ahead of schedule. This will be increasingly important if you have chosen a subject such as biology or physics, where an experiment may be necessary.

2. Writing without a clear research question

Without a clear research question, your essay can easily become disorganized, unclear, or overly vague. Your research question serves as a template and an overview of your entire essay, so ensuring that you are constantly relating to/reinforcing your research question is important when writing your extended essay. In addition, refining your question to be specific and arguable will allow for in-depth conversation in addition to possible counterarguments.

3. Ignoring assessment criteria

Even a well-researched essay will receive a low mark if not created based on the IB rubric. Many students will often lose marks by forgetting how to clearly display critical thinking, not having proper source usage, or ignoring other IB criteria.