Travelling in a quiet carriage
Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.
After the noise of the station, the quiet carriage felt like a door closing gently. Nobody demanded complete silence. Pages turned, keyboards clicked and two passengers spoke in low voices. These small sounds belonged to people travelling rather than competing to be heard.
Halfway through the journey, a phone rang. Its bright tune seemed to fill every corner of the carriage. The owner answered, but another passenger pointed towards the quiet-carriage sign. With an apologetic nod, the caller moved into the space by the doors. The interruption lasted less than a minute because everyone understood what the sign was asking them to do.
Quiet carriages are not perfect. A parent cannot prevent a baby from crying, and an urgent call may need an answer. However, most noise is a choice. Keeping one carriage quieter gives passengers somewhere to read, work or simply rest. Clear rules, applied with patience, protect that choice without turning silence into a punishment.
Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.
The quiet-carriage sign changed the passengers before the train had even moved. People inspected their tickets, lowered their voices and watched one another. When a child asked for a drink, a man looked up sharply from his laptop. The child had spoken softly, but the carriage already felt like a room in which everyone expected somebody else to break a rule.
I enjoy a peaceful journey. I do not enjoy loud calls, music escaping from headphones or conversations shouted across seats. Yet these are inconsiderate in any carriage. A special quiet area can suggest that ordinary courtesy is only required behind one particular door. It can also create arguments about sounds that cannot reasonably be avoided.
Train companies should ask passengers throughout the train to keep devices quiet and conversations moderate. Staff can challenge serious disturbance wherever it occurs. Those who need absolute silence could use headphones, while families and friends should still speak considerately. A shared journey works best when passengers adapt to one another, not when a sign divides them into the silent and the noisy.
Compare how the writers convey their ideas and perspectives about quiet carriages on trains.
In your response, consider:
Support your comparisons with detailed references to both texts.
834 exam-style questions on Edexcel GCSE English Language 2.3 Content: non-fiction study and transactional text types, covering 2.3.9 Write an article, 2.3.10 Write a letter, 2.3.11 Write a review, 2.3.12 Write a text for a speech, and 2.3.13 Write a section for a guide, textbook, leaflet or booklet. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.