Comparative textual analysis is not easy. Certainly, doing comparative textual analysis well is not easy. It requires a lot of modeling on the part of the teacher and scaffolded activities before students can tackle comparative analysis independently and with confidence. In particular, it takes time for students to learn how to show a developed understanding of the ways in which language achieves meaning and effect, whilst also comparing and contrasting.

Ordinarily, Paper 1 HL pits two texts against one another. The theme or topic is the same, but the perspective and text type are different. This, in itself, is one of the challenges of the task; comparing a newspaper story to a contemporary poem, say, requires versatility and eclectic, sophisticated language awareness. Not all students, we know, become virtuosos.

One approach to developing close and critical language awareness is for teachers to ask students to compare texts that share similar interesting elements. On this page, for example, texts are organized according to the different ways in which setting is evoked. Teachers could (also) organize texts around other areas for analysis: Dialogue, punctuation, syntax, pattern making, rule breaking, tone, irony, characterization, lexis, register, narrative perspective, and so on.

In addition, teachers may wish to ask students to compare texts that are of the same or similar genre, developing a fuller insight into genre conventions. Below, for example, you can find four poems that can all be described as ‘dramatic monologues’. The opportunity exists for teachers to model textual analysis with two of the texts, allowing students to work independently with the two that remain.