30 FOR 30 TOK

Learning a language is more than mastering vocabulary and grammar. It is an encounter with a different way of organising experience, and it raises questions that go to the heart of how language and knowledge are related.

30 For 30 TOK: IB Language B is the third book in the 30 For 30 TOK series, which pairs thirty IB diploma subjects with thirty searching questions about the nature of the knowledge it produces. This volume focuses on the IB Language B course, asking questions about what it means to learn a language from the outside and what that process reveals about the relationship between language, culture, and thought.

From untranslatable words to the epistemology of machine translation, from the global dominance of English to the knowledge carried in endangered languages, the thirty questions in this book press on assumptions that language learning often leaves unexamined. Sample responses model what careful thinking about language, culture, and intercultural knowledge looks like in practice.

Designed for IB Language B students, language teachers, TOK educators, and anyone who has ever felt that something was lost in translation and wondered exactly what.