Comparing Writers' Ideas And Perspectives

Twenty two of the forty five reading marks in Component 1 sit in a single question, and it is the only one that cannot be answered by reading either text carefully. It asks for the thing that exists between them. A candidate who writes eleven excellent marks worth about the anthology text and eleven about the unseen extract has not written a twenty two mark answer; they have written two eleven mark answers and left the connection to the examiner.

This note is about perspective: where each writer is standing, what they want from you, and what they will not say. You will learn the four axes on which non-fiction writers genuinely differ, how to build a comparison grid in six minutes when you have studied one text for two years and met the other four minutes ago, and how to keep the two texts in balance when one of them is far more familiar than the other.