Well, what are they? I know what IB is, but what’s the difference between SL and HL and what are they?
HL is higher level and SL is standard level. This website has more information in the “Choosing subjects in the Diploma Programme” section.
: http://www.ibo.org/en/programmes/diploma-programme/curriculum/
How they teach it depends on the school, though. At my school some SLs are 1 year and some are 2, and the HLs are 1 year.
SL classes are considered easier than HL classes. In a full IB programme, students are limited in the number of SL and HL classes–they can’t take all SL or all HL classes; it must be a combination. At my Ds school, both SL and HL classes are 2 years. Colleges usually don’t give college credit for SL classes, even though they are similar to AP. Colleges often give college credit for HL classes, depending on the end-of-year exam scores.
In my Ds high school, SL and HL students are often in the same class, but have different requirements.
It must depend on the school, at our IB school, SL is a one year class and HL is a two year class. For the IB Diploma. a student must have sufficiently high scores in 3 SLs and 3 HLs, across 5 core subject areas, plus one additional area, either arts or another core area (plus the CAS, TOK and Extended Essay requirements).
^^ You can also take 4 HLs and 2 SLs but it’s obviously very difficult. You learn less in standard level classes - e.g. biology, you learn half the content higher level students do. The final standard level exams are also easier than the higher level ones.
People tend to take the subjects they’re weaker at at standard level and the subjects they’re interested in/relate to their intended major at higher level. There are classes where there is a significant difference in difficulty between SL/HL (maths, sciences) and some where there is very little difference (English literature, history, foreign languages, economics etc).
I’ve heard foreign language SL and HL are pretty different, but that might just be mouth to mouth.
At my school foreign language HL and SL is in the same classroom, those in HL are just graded harder and they have to do more. For example, the SLs might have to write 150 words in Spanish for a test and the HLs have to write 200.