 Essay writing can be an extremely challenging skill to master and more so if you are expected to compare two different texts, whether they are seen 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. What I will do is I will 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 essay 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'll simplify this question essentially, but it applies to any context from being really honest when it comes to comparing two 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 the question can 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, can 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 on, 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 and 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 key words 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 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 in introduction, you begin by restating the key words from the question. Then you state the writers effectively present the keyword x, love, power, 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 argument sake, compare how sonnet 116 written by William Shakespeare presents love in comparison to remember by Christina Rossetti. 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 way or presents keyword in this way, then write a 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 Rossetti. 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 keywords you can use in your paragraphs. 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 keywords. Then after that, you write a sentence basically saying what does text A say in relation to the keywords. Following on from that, you then talk about text B. What does text B say? Does it support the keywords? Is it similar to text A? Or is it different? Then you quote from text A to support your point, always remember, quotation is important because you're showing us 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 or 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 Sonnet 116, if your first point was to do with how love is presented as something to be cherished in Sonnet 116, whilst love can fade and remember, your second point could be, for instance, the speakers in Sonnet 116 or the speaker in Sonnet 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. And you essentially repeat this process for point number one. 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 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 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've 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 if it's 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 as 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.