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Teaching the perspectives question in Language Paper 2

Question 4 is the only question in GCSE English Language that assesses AO3, comparing writers’ perspectives. AQA’s examiners have said plainly what keeps answers in Level 2, and a short plan deals with most of it.

Quick guide for teachers · 5 minute read

Question 4 on AQA’s Language Paper 2 is worth 16 of the paper’s 80 marks. Students compare the whole of Source A with the whole of Source B, and the specification says the sources “will be drawn from the 19th century, and either the 20th or 21st century”. It is the only question in the qualification that assesses AO3: “Compare writers’ ideas and perspectives, as well as how these are conveyed, across two or more texts”.

What the question asks

In June 2023 the question read: “Compare how the writers convey their different feelings and perspectives about their experiences of travelling on a train.” Its bullet points asked students to compare the feelings and perspectives, compare the methods, and refer to both texts.

AQA updated both Language papers for the exams from summer 2026. Its summary of the changes says Question 4 “has a change to the wording of the bullet point referring to methods”, while the number of marks and the assessment objectives stay the same. In AQA’s sample mark scheme for the updated Paper 2, the same train question now asks students to “comment on the methods the writers use to convey their feelings and perspectives”. Update older practice questions before you print them.

The June 2023 mark scheme has four levels: Level 1 (1 to 4 marks), Level 2 (5 to 8), Level 3 (9 to 12) and Level 4 (13 to 16). At every level the descriptor pairs the writers’ ideas with the writers’ methods. An answer that compares what the two writers think and says nothing about how they show it is answering half the question.

What the examiners reward

The June 2023 report is specific. Source A was Peter Fleming’s 20th-century account of travelling on the Trans-Siberian Express, including his distaste for the food. Source B was Fanny Kemble’s account of her very first ride on a steam train.

Answers in Level 3 could “clearly identify Source A’s perspective as that of a dissatisfied and ungrateful passenger”. The very best, in Level 4, were able to “set their answer within a conceptual framework”, for example by comparing the two writers’ attitudes to the technology itself. Answers stayed lower when they compared the perspectives “as being ‘positive’ and ‘negative’”, “saying no more than one is good and the other is bad or one likes it and the other one doesn’t”. The report also sets a rule worth putting on the wall: “Comparisons must compare the same aspect in both texts to be rewarded in Level 3.”

Two habits follow. Students name each perspective in a precise phrase, one that tells the examiner who is speaking and why: a dissatisfied and ungrateful passenger, for example. And they pair like with like, so a method in Source A sits next to a method in Source B that does a job for the same aspect.

A plan in three minutes

Lesson 9 of our Language Paper 2 scheme teaches a three-minute plan before twenty minutes of writing: two perspectives, three methods, and a quotation from each source for each method. On the page it looks like this:

  1. One line for each writer: who they are, when they wrote, and their attitude in a phrase.
  2. The aspect both sources share, written as a question (how does each writer feel about this place?).
  3. Three rows, each with a method and a short quotation from each source about that aspect.
  4. A first sentence that states the difference between the two perspectives and where each comes from.

An example: Darwin and Scott

Lesson 6 pairs two sources the way the exam does, one from each century. In The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), Charles Darwin follows a stream up a ravine in Tierra del Fuego, through a forest of fallen and rotting trees. Robert Falcon Scott’s diary for 17 January 1912 records the day his party reached the South Pole on the tracks of the Norwegians, who had got there first.

Darwin is a naturalist recording a new place, and even decay is worth the climb: he says he was “amply repaid by the grandeur of the scene”. Scott has lost the race and writes: “Great God! this is an awful place”.

The rows then compare like with like. Darwin’s calm personification, “Death, instead of Life, seemed the predominant spirit”, sits beside Scott’s exclamation, because both are the writer’s verdict on the place. Darwin’s long, balanced sentences sit beside Scott’s clipped diary notes: “The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected.” A strong first sentence might say, for example, that both men are in a wild, hostile place, and Darwin is fascinated because he came to study it, while Scott is crushed because he came to be first.

The modern half of a pairing works the same way. In Lesson 9, Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing (1859) sits beside a nurse’s blog written for the scheme. Both writers distrust false hope at a sickbed. Nightingale argues in sharp, formal prose, calling visitors’ optimism “the incurable hopes of their friends”, and the nurse tells the story of one patient on a night shift and ends with short commands. Same aspect, different methods: the comparison the report rewards.

On Monday

  • Teach viewpoint and perspective as two words: what a writer thinks, and where that view comes from (their time, place, experience and values).
  • Take positive and negative off the table as a whole comparison. Ask for a noun phrase for each writer.
  • Give students the comparative words (both, whereas, while) and ask them to circle each one in a model paragraph, as Lesson 6 does.
  • Time it in class. In the full paper Question 4 gets about twenty minutes, the plan included.
  • When you read drafts, check one thing first: does each comparison hold the same aspect in both sources?

Our Language Paper 2 scheme teaches Question 4 in Lessons 6, 7 and 9, and Feedback Loop kit 2 assesses it in Lesson 9. The free Lesson 3 sampler works on Question 3, the language question that Question 4 builds on. For students, Language Paper 2, question by question covers the whole paper.

Sources

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