Examination Recapitulation

Edexcel IGCSE English Language

Tips on comparison question

Comparison question is the last question of section-A. When you compare two texts, first
discuss the language of one text considering its genres, audience, and purpose in one
paragraph and then do the same for the second text in another paragraph.

Then in the third paragraph talk about language techniques used; register(formal/informal)
and how it is shown, sentence type, facts/opinions used and how they affect the text. Do
the same in the fourth paragraph for your other piece of text.

Consider the following points before attempting to answer the comparison question of the
question paper.

1. Genre: Read the text thoroughly and try to identify what type / kind of text it is.

2. Content: Does the text serve the given purpose or satisfy the demands of the audience
or the tone of text make any impact on you?

3. Purpose of the text: To inform, instruct, advise, argue, entertain, persuade, describe,
motivate, educate etc.

4. Language: Use of figures of speech (metaphors, similes, personification, alliteration

onomatopoeia, etc), descriptive noun or verb or presence of any sensory details (touch,
hearing, sight, smell, taste).

5. Negative aspects of language: Appalling, horrifying, clumsy and awkward

descriptions, difficult/staccato words, poor and erratic organization, too much educational,
slow and dragged, occasional repetitive expressions, congested and thereby a boring
reading.

6. Style of language: You need to know what writing techniques to look for and why each of
them is used. Different techniques will be used to appeal to different audiences or meet
different purposes. The identification of techniques includes; Register (formal/informal and
its effect), tone (impersonal or chatty, authoritative or reflective, subjective, objective or
passionate, serious or funny), impression (narrative or descriptive), simple in structure,
various sentence pattern, persuasive devices and rhetorical questions.

7. Presentational devices: Different presentational devices create different effects. Use of

presentational devices such as: Difference in arrangement (topic, caption, title, heading,
sub-heading and sub-headings), font size and lettering (bold, italic etc), colour, layout
features (bullets, boxed text), structure (short or long paragraphs), quotations (things
people said either in quotation marks or highlighted in the text) paragraphing, any
illustrations (pictures, diagrams, maps, photographs) and their impact on the readers mind.
Note: While answering this particular question it is very important to quote relevant
words /expressions/ extracts from all the texts in order to support your arguments in
defending your preferred or chosen text and also to show enough reasons why you have not
chosen or rejected the other.
Md. Bazlul Karim, Senior English Language Faculty
 Whenever you compare two different texts, you should always include and talk about (FLAP
rule) FLAP stands for form, language, audience and purpose of the text. This always
helps when comparing two different texts. 

The question on comparing writing techniques

There are three steps to answering this question.
 You need to identify writing techniques used in a text.
 You need to say what effects these techniques have - why are they used?
 You then need to do the same for another text, saying which techniques and effects
are similar and which ones are different.
This means in your answer you will have to write at least four paragraphs describing:
1. which writing techniques are used
2. why these techniques are used
3. how these are similar or different from writing techniques from another text
4. why these similar or different writing techniques are used in the other text
Your marks will be spread evenly across these four sections.

Identifying writing techniques

The question is similar to question 2, but instead of identifying presentational devices, you will
be identifying and comparing writing techniques. You therefore need to know what writing
techniques to look for and why each of them is used. Different techniques will be used to appeal
to different audiences or meet different purposes.
These are the techniques you should be able to identify:
 Words: are they simple or difficult, formal or informal?
 Sentences: are they short or long?
 Paragraphs: are they short or long? Are they all the same length, or do some stand
out for emphasis or dramatic effect?
 Personal pronouns: does the text use the personal pronoun 'you' or 'we' to
address the reader? Using 'we' is a technique the text could use to create a close personal
relationship.
 Persuasive techniques: does the writer use rhetorical questions (eg "Have you
ever wondered what it would be like to be a billionaire?"), groups of three (eg "The good,
the bad and the ugly...") or alliteration (eg "sizzling sunshine")? These can all be used to
persuade the reader to feel a certain way about something.
 Discourse markers: does the writer use casual, chatty discourse markers
(eg "anyway, you know what I mean, so") or more formal ones (eg "nevertheless,
therefore, however")?
 Emotive vocabulary: are the words colourful (eg "extraordinary, teeming,
resplendent") or plain (eg "good, full of, organised").
 Exclamations: does the writing sound angry and argumentative (eg "This must
stop..." or "We must think again...") or is the writing more thoughtful (eg "probably, it
might be, on the other hand").
 Facts and opinions: does the text use lots of facts and statistics or are there more
opinions? Is the text intended to inform or to persuade, review and entertain?

The question on identifying presentational devices

 The second question relates to the way the text looks. To get all the marks on this question you
need to do two things:
1. List the presentational devices the text uses.
2. Explain why these devices are used and what effect they have.
To answer the first part of the question you need be able to recognise presentational devices
such as:
 Headings (titles) and sub-headings
 Photos
 Pictures
 Illustrations
 Font size and style (bold, italic etc)
 Colour
 Layout features (bullets, boxed text)
 Structure (short or long paragraphs)
 Quotations (things people said either in quotation marks or highlighted in the text)
A good way of revising is to analyse any text you see or read. Pick up a magazine and look at a
page at random. You should be able to spot a whole range of devices being used.

Why presentational devices are used

The devices used depend on:
 Purpose - what the text is trying to do (eg inform, advise, persuade).
 Audience - who it is trying to talk to (eg children, adults, men, women).
Choices in layout (such as the use of pictures, diagrams and lists) are made to meet a specific
purpose and communicate with a specific audience. Choices in colour and font, for
example, can be made to appeal to a specific target group. You might use lively colours and
playful fonts in a text for kids and more serious fonts and colours for adults. Different
presentational devices create different effects.
Remember: there are three main reasons for using presentational devices: mood,
memory, clarity.

Mood
A piece of writing will always try to express feelings. The mood created could be fun and
excitement (eg in a brochure for a theme park) or perhaps fear and concern (eg in an advice
sheet about road safety). The feelings should always be in tune with the target audience.
Devices to look out for in mood:
 Pictures
 Fonts
 Colour
 Quotes

Memory
If the main purpose of a piece of non-fiction writing is to inform, then it is important that
readers find and remember key bits of information. These can include website addresses or
phone numbers, advice or statistics.
Devices to look out for that are used to aid memory:
 Bold text
 Headlines and sub headings
 Bullet points
 Diagrams, maps and illustrations
 Clarity
Most non-fiction texts are written for people in a hurry, so it is important that the purpose and
audience of a text is clear. This will make the right people pick it up and read it. The information
within the text also needs to be clearly presented otherwise people will stop reading.
Devices to look out for to aid clarity:
 Bold text
 Bullet points
 Sub-headings
 Paragraphs
 Colour
 Images and captions
 Quotes

Elements of style
Many elements of writing contribute to an author’s style, but three of the most
important are word choice, sentence fluency, and voice.

WORD CHOICE

Good writers are concise and precise, weeding out unnecessary words and
choosing the exact word to convey meaning. Precise words — active verbs,
concrete nouns, specific adjectives — help the reader visualize the sentence.
Good writers use adjectives sparingly and adverbs rarely, letting their nouns and
verbs do the work.
Good writers also choose words that contribute to the flow of a sentence.
Polysyllabic words, alliteration, and consonance can be used to create sentences
that roll off the tongue. Onomatopoeia and short, staccato words can be used to
break up the rhythm of a sentence.

SENTENCE FLUENCY

Sentence fluency is the flow and rhythm of phrases and sentences.

Good writers use a variety of sentences with different lengths and
rhythms to achieve different effects. They use parallel structures
within sentences and paragraphs to reflect parallel ideas, but also
know how to avoid monotony by varying their sentence structures.
Good writers also arrange their ideas within a sentence for greatest
effect. They avoid loose sentences, deleting extraneous words and
rearranging their ideas for effect. Many students initially write with a
looser oral style, adding words on to the end of a sentence in the order
they come to mind. This rambling style is often described as a “word
dump” where everything in a student’s mind is dumped onto the paper
in no particular order. There is nothing wrong with a word dump as a
starting point: the advantage of writing over speaking is that writers
can return to their words, rethink them, and revise them for effect.
Tighter, more readable style results when writers choose their words
carefully, delete redundancies, make vague words more specific, and
use subordinate clauses and phrases to rearrange their ideas for the
greatest effect.

VOICE

Because voice is difficult to measure reliably, it is often left out of

scoring formulas for writing tests. Yet voice is an essential element of
style that reveals the writer’s personality. A writer’s voice can be
impersonal or chatty, authoritative or reflective, objective or
passionate, serious or funny.

Is the author’s purpose to provide information(facts) or give an opinion (or both)?

For information (facts) : you might find examples of:
 Statistics, numbers, dates, times
 The author’s own examples and quotes
 Quoting an expert (which often poses as
fact!)
 Reported Speech
 Dialogue
 Technical Language (suggesting expertise)
For opinion, there might be:
 anecdotes
 first person pronouns
 unsubstantiated claims
 hyperbole
 commands(imperative verb form),
 challenging rhetorical questions
 generalisations
 asides
2. Is the author’s purpose descriptive?  You might find:
 Lively, vivid language and/or use of adjectives
 Use of the five senses: touch, hearing, sight, smell, taste
 Symbols
 Similes
 Personification
 Metaphor
 Active verbs
3. For both 1 and 2, you might also find examples the author’s tone e.g. in formal, humorous or
informal ways:.
For Formal, you might find:
 Standard English grammar
 Impersonal tone
 emotive language (i.e. encouraging an emotional
response)
 Passive mood verb forms
 the use of ‘one’ e.g. ‘one might say …’
For humorous:
 irony
 mockery
 mimicry
For informal:
 Colloquial language (i.e. everyday spoken
language) and writing to represented how words are spoken
 Slang
 Dialect vocabulary and grammar
 Elision
 Personal comments/observations
 Emotive language (can appear here as well as
under ‘formal’ above)
 First person pronouns
4. Linguistic Devices:
There are a number of additional ‘how’ techniques that authors use to guide their
readers in the ‘right’ direction.  The following often appear in discourse (i.e. a speech,
report, newspaper article etc):
o Language and structural elements:
 Repetition, triple phrasing, use of a list
 Contrast, antithesis, juxtaposition, bathos
 Language directed at a particular type of reader e.g. young people
o Language at Sentence Level:
 Sentence structures: compound sentences, complex sentences,
simple sentences and the non-sentence
 Sentence types: exclamation, rhetorical question, statement
o Language at word and phrase level:
 alliteration, onomatopœia, pun, double-meaning, oxymoron