SA writing can be an extremely challenging school to master and more so if you are expected to compare two different texts whether they are scene texts or these are texts that you have studied and you know intricately or whether they are unseen texts. Either way when it comes to writing an essay where you were comparing the two this can be where a lot of students tend to lose marks in however if you learn how to master this skill you stand to gain a lot of marks and even see a massive jump in your grades as a student be it for example in GCSE in secondary school even in A level and also university. Now as you can see behind me essentially what I've done is I've created a framework when it comes to writing and comparing two texts whether they are seen texts unseen texts and this framework can be applied to any question which comes to comparing two separate texts. So what I'll do is I'll walk you through this framework and I would urge you to perhaps watch this video again but also most importantly adopt this framework practice write it out in order to improve your essay comparison skills when you're looking at two separate texts. Now I've made up a hypothetical question usually as a comparison questions ask you for example to compare the significance of text A with text B to discuss how a theme is illustrated in poem one versus poem two to discuss how something is shown in one text versus another. Okay so I've simplified this question essentially but it applies to any context from being really honest when it comes to comparing to separate texts. So the question usually tends to be something along the lines of compare text A whatever text it is whether you've seen it before you've never seen it before with text B okay and you get a variation of that kind of question sometimes a question could be quite long can be quite short but really when you cut through to the main thing that this question is asking you it's essentially asking you can you compare you talk about the similarities and all differences in this text versus this other text. Now when you are writing this kind of question essentially you begin with an introduction now always remember for any essay you should always try to introduce the topic introduce the conversation and also at the end of your essay you should always try to conclude the discussion okay and I'm going to talk about conclusions slightly later one but this is standard practice this is very very good practice okay what you're showing the examiner what you're showing your teacher for instance if it's a coursework is that you were able to address the question directly you're able to broadly state for instance what you're going to talk about and then you go into the points in the details do you remember that the introduction does not have the different points you don't put quotations or anything you just open the introduction you introduce what you're going to talk about and of course in the conclusion same thing you don't add any quotations you don't add any extra points you just broadly close it okay now in your introduction essentially what goes in in your introduction is firstly you restate the key words in the question in other words the question which asks you to compare text A and text B usually gives you something which you have to compare for instance compare how love is presented in text A versus text B compare how power or the significance of power in text A versus text B whatever it is the key words and that's why I've put it in orange here the keywords are really the particular words that you're expected to focus on when you're looking at either texts now for instance if you're asked to compare how love is shown in the text A versus text B but then you go off and talk about how power is being shown you automatically have started off quite weak because you're not answering the question okay so your introduction you begin by restating the keywords from the question then you state the writers effectively present the key word love power or whatever through a variety of literature techniques or language techniques or structural techniques okay so really that's it for your introduction you begin by restating the key words and then saying that the writers effectively present these either in very similar ways or in very different ways now once you've finished with your introduction so that's your first paragraph you then move on to your first point now essentially your point is where you begin with what is the leading text in the question so as you can see here I've put text A as green this is important because the leading text could be for instance let's say for arguments sake compare how sonnet 116 written by William Shakespeare presents love in comparison to remember by Christina Rezetti given the question asks you firstly with sonnet 116 that is text A that's the leading text meaning in your first point and your first paragraph after your introduction you begin by referring back to that text A and always open your first point by saying firstly your second point you can talk about secondly and so on okay now you've opened with connecting back to text A the leading text you said text A presents love in this word or presents keyword in this way the writer sentence then you follow on in the same sentence with text B okay you always want to consistently compare both texts within the same paragraph and even within the same sentence consistently so for instance love is presented as something to be cherished by Shakespeare whilst love is presented as something that can fade for instance in remember by Christina Rezetti now once you've done that you then quote from text A first of all and then you mentioned for example techniques then you support your point with text B now essentially always remember that there's some key words you can use in your paragraph for example if you're making a similar point you can say for instance similarly whilst text A shows this text B shows that however if it's the different points you would say things like on the other hand whilst text A says this text B says that okay however from point number one after your introduction you're either making a similar point where you're talking about how text A is very similar to text B or you're making a difference point on the other hand text B does this whilst text A does this okay and then you close off your first point your first example by a closing statement which contains text A and text B a reference back to text A whilst text A does this text B does that okay so just to reinforce your first point and every paragraph that follows on from your first point should have the following components you begin with the leading text text A says this in relation to the key words then after that you write a sentence basically saying what does text A say in relation to the key words following on from that you then talk about text B what does text B say does it support the key words is it similar to text A or is it different then you quote from text A to support your point or remember quotation is important because you're showing it's not only your assumption you're not just making this up you have information from the text to show and back up your point then afterwards you follow with a quote from text B then you tie in and you finish it off with a closing statement whilst this text shows this this other text shows this if it's a difference point all text A shows this similarly text B shows this now you then repeat the process again with a separate point so you repeat the above process making another point for example going back to my example of senate 116 if your first point was to do with how love is presented as something to be cherished and senate 116 whilst love can fade and remember your second point could be for instance the speakers in a son at 116 or the speaker in a son at 116 says love should be forgiving for any kind of misdeed whilst for instance the speaker in remember for example you can argue the speaker shows that love actually is unforgiving for example right that's not exactly the case for the poems but I'm just giving a hypothetical example okay and you essentially repeat this process for point number one okay then you make your third point try and make at least three points in an essay when you're comparing two separate texts that therefore means you're going to have to probably you know speed up your pace of writing if you find that quite challenging because the reason why you need to make at least three points is you're trying to show a broad idea of and a broad understanding of what's happening in both texts but also you're trying to show and show off the depth of your knowledge okay so then you basically make point number two where you're repeating the process of point number one you then make point number three where you're repeating the process you can use keywords such as um secondly for point number two whilst text A does this text B does that or secondly text A does this and also text B does that then same thing for point number three thirdly additionally if you even have time to make a fourth point you can say fourthly finally and then after you've done that after you made all your points you finish off with a conclusion a conclusion should not be reams and reams and reams of writing it's just very similar to an introduction you're broadly closing your discussion so you restate the keywords in the question then you state that the writers have both shown this of as similar points or the writers have shown whilst on the one hand this is the case on the other hand this is the other case okay this is for different points if your essay is just highlighting how the texts are very different so hopefully that essentially shows you how to compare two texts do you remember that when you're writing comparison essays you should not have one paragraph dedicated completely to just one extract or one text and then the second paragraph which follows is the second text that's not comparing you're basically writing two separate paragraphs talking in a parallel way about two separate points but you're not making the connections you're not comparing the two okay so hopefully this shows you how within the text you compare the two texts consistently okay so hopefully that helps you when understanding how to compare two separate texts in an essay and thank you so much for watching