Comparing viewpoints
Compare how two writers from different periods convey their different perspectives across paired non-fiction texts (Paper 2, Section A).
Learn
Comparing viewpoints, explained point by point
Everything the GCSE specification expects you to be able to do, and how to actually do it - the same lesson a signed-in student studies from.
Identify each writer's viewpoint and perspective on the shared topic (AO3)
Before comparing, pin down each writer's stance in one sentence: one sees city life as exhilarating, the other as exhausting. Perspective also covers position - an insider or an outsider, writing at the time or looking back. Two clear stance statements give the whole answer its frame.
Compare ideas and attitudes across the two texts, not just topics (AO3)
The texts share a subject; the marks come from comparing what the writers THINK and FEEL about it. Go beyond "both texts are about zoos" to "the first writer marvels at the animals while the second grieves for them". Attitude words - admires, resents, mocks, fears - keep your comparison sharp.
Analyse HOW each writer conveys their perspective - the methods (AO3)
This question weds ideas to techniques: link each attitude to the methods that deliver it. One writer's wonder arrives through breathless lists and exclamations; the other's weariness through flat, short sentences and ironic understatement. Perspective plus method plus evidence is the full-mark formula.
Structure your answer comparatively, moving between texts throughout
Organise by point of comparison, not by text: a paragraph on how each writer views the people involved, another on tone, another on how each ends. Comparative connectives - whereas, likewise, in contrast - should stitch every paragraph. Two separate summaries, however good, cap the mark.
Support the comparison with paired evidence from both texts
The strongest paragraphs set one writer's words directly against the other's: the first calls the storm "a magnificent spectacle" while the second calls it "a long night of dread". Paired quotations make the difference in perspective visible on the page - the evidence does the comparing with you.
Practice
Try a Comparing viewpoints question
A GCSE-style original task from this topic. Sketch a quick plan of your own before you open what a strong answer covers.
Read the two sources below - both original passages written for practice - and then answer the question that follows. Source A: from a newspaper column published in 2023, "In defence of the city". People keep telling me to leave London "for my own good", as though the city were a habit to be broken. They speak of birdsong and big skies. Fine. But at 11pm on a Tuesday I can see a film from Senegal, eat food from Sichuan and hear four languages on one bus home - and I call that being alive. The city is a machine for chance encounters: the stranger who became my business partner, the gallery I ducked into out of the rain that rearranged my head. Yes, it is loud. Yes, my flat is the size of a generous wardrobe. But loneliness is not cured by fields; it is cured by people, and here the people never stop coming. Source B: from a letter written in the voice of 1852, by a clerk who has moved his family out of London. You ask how we do since quitting the city. I answer: we breathe. In London I rose in the dark, was jostled along Cheapside among ten thousand strangers, every man's elbow at war with his neighbour's, and came home in the dark again, my collar grey with smuts before noon. The din never ceased - iron wheels on stone from first light past midnight. Here my children have colour in their cheeks. I know my neighbours' names, all of them. We keep a pig. The great city is a marvel, I grant you, but it is a marvel that eats men quietly, and I would sooner be a whole man in a small place than a shaving of one in the metropolis. Compare how the writers convey their different attitudes to city life. In your answer, you could: - compare their different attitudes - compare the methods the writers use to convey those attitudes - support your response with references to both texts. [16 marks]
Show what a strong answer covers
The marking points an examiner looks for. Not a model answer - a checklist to plan against.
- AO3: identifies and compares the writers' central perspectives - A celebrates the city as energising and connecting; B presents it as draining and dehumanising - recognising nuance (A concedes noise and cramped space; B grants the city is "a marvel")
- AO3: compares the writers' methods for portraying the city, e.g. A's metaphor of "a machine for chance encounters" and vivid cosmopolitan listing versus B's imagery of consumption and diminishment ("eats men quietly", "a shaving of one")
- AO3: compares how each writer handles the countryside/alternative - A's dismissive "They speak of birdsong and big skies. Fine." versus B's concrete evidence of recovery ("we breathe", children's "colour in their cheeks", knowing neighbours' names)
- AO3: sustains an integrated comparison throughout, moving between texts with apt supporting detail and considering how context shapes viewpoint (a modern columnist's crowded city versus a Victorian clerk's working conditions)