4 mistakes learners make with comparing texts, each one named and explained.
A comparison links how two writers treat one idea. Retelling either of them is not comparing.
A comparison concludes that both novels show the government is evil and people suffer.
It is a real idea about both texts, and at this level ideas feel like the thing being marked.
Question. Compare how the two writers present power.
A common answer. both show that the government is evil
The answer. both make power feel inescapable, one through surveillance and one through the body
Why. The claim is about the world of the book; the mark is for how the writing creates it.
Name the technique. An idea with no method attached cannot be evidenced.
A comparison opens by noting that both novels were written in the twentieth century and are dystopian.
Context is known to earn marks, so it gets included, and the step of connecting it to the writing is the one that is missing.
Question. Compare how the two writers present power.
A common answer. both were written in the twentieth century
The answer. writing after the war shapes how each of them imagines surveillance
Why. Context counts when it explains something about the text, not when it sits beside it.
Every piece of context needs a because.
A comparison reads: one novel is about a man called Winston, the other about a woman called Offred.
It is true, it is about both texts, and it is the part of the answer that is easiest to be certain of.
Question. Compare how the two writers present power.
A common answer. one is about Winston and the other about Offred
The answer. both use a first-person narrator, but one makes power bodily and the other makes it psychological
Why. A comparison has to be about what the writers do, not about what happens.
If you could write the sentence having only read the blurb, it is not analysis.
A comparative paragraph describes text A in full, then text B in full, and never joins them.
Both texts get covered and it feels thorough, and writing about one thing at a time is easier than holding two in view.
Question. Compare how the two writers present isolation.
A common answer. a paragraph on the first text, then a paragraph on the second
The answer. one idea, with both writers' handling of it side by side
Why. The comparison is the point, so it belongs inside the paragraph rather than after it.
Structure the essay by idea, never by text.
WAJD spots these patterns in your child's answers and names the one behind their wrong answers, instead of just marking them wrong.