We have written a practice extended essay in our FIB integrate humanities class this term, which is a great practice and preparation for the IB Extended Essay we will be writing next year. My research question was ”to what extent was the great depression the main reason for the failure of the League of Nations in the 1930s” which its contents were both history and economy related. Since I am taking a high level of both of these two subjects (History, Economic) next year for my IB courses, I found this practice EE was a beneficial experience that I have not only learned the general knowledge about how to write an academic EE such as the format and coming up with an effective research question, but my weaknesses and concerns on writing the extended essay emerged throughout the process as well.

On the 23rd of May, I had a great discussion with my integrate humanities teacher Mr Paul Sharry on feeding back my essay. During the discussion, we had fixed a few fundamental problems within my essay first which were: the introduction should include the explanation of the LON’s function as a first intergovernmental organization in the world, lack of evidence and explanation about Showa Depression in Japan etc, and then I had analysed and came up with the crucial problems of writing a piece of strong response which were the parts I dearly need to work on until next year.

My major weakness in writing an EE is the critical thinking part and how to construct my essay with a compelling argument instead of being descriptive all the time. The essential ideology of thinking in terms of this essay is the argument that thought the LON was a failure, but which factor is the more significant and more crucial contributors in comparison with the others. Also, in the aspect of failure, LON did not fail entirely as nothing can be called a complete failure, and the league did succeed in a certain degree in terms of the League’s legacies. The strength of this essay I think was I did include critical thinking about the success of the League, and as Mr Sharry pointed out that I made a great attempt to complete this essay task which it has shown the critical thinking of the League’s failure. However, another major concern and also my main takeaway from this practice extended essay was my argument should flow throughout the whole piece and connect each section to show their importance of how they are linked to an overall argument.