Comparing Texts, Paper 2, Question 2

This resource includes:

1. 9 Steps: Just tell me what to do
2. Sample question
3. What does the examiner really want?
4. To sample texts
5. Student misconceptions and the need to infer even though the question does not specify this.
6. Question 2
7. Just tell me what to do
8. Model answer
9. Model answer annotated for inference
10. Model answer rewritten so that it can be done by a student in 200 words

Here is the beginning of the model answer:
Below is the model answer again. Bold and green shows you where it infers.

Phelps and Finley are both female writers with similar experiences of writing, but they have completely different attitudes to their work. Phelps combines writing with motherhood, as her daughter remembers “I cannot remember one hour in which her children needed her and did not find her”. So perhaps this explains her desire to write children’s stories “written for ourselves” (her children) and not for public consumption.

In contrast, Finley chooses to remain a “spinster” and also published books “for children”, rather than keeping it for her own children. Although she has no children of her own, so she could have written them for those she taught or for those in “Sunday school”.

Both women suffered from ill health. Finley seems, to a modern reader, to have little wrong with her, as she survives many years in apparent ill health: “has been an invalid for a number of years and has done much of her writing while prostrated by illness.” It is unlikely that a writer could continue with serious illness, as Phelps’ history indicates. Phelps died, according to her daughter, apparently from overwork, “The struggle killed her, but she fought till she fell”. This is in complete contrast to Finley, who despite her claimed illness wrote many books and looked a picture of good health, with “a figure inclined to plumpness. Her hair is snow white.”