Text 1: The morning the town disappeared, by Ellen Price
An original contemporary online article.
I woke to a message from my sister: “Look outside.” The garden fence had vanished under the snow. I pulled on my boots and went to the park, where the paths were already covered. The town looked quieter than usual, as if someone had turned the volume down.
By the time I reached the high street, people were out with shovels. A shopkeeper was clearing a path to his door, while two children rolled a snowball between them, pushing it until it was wider than either of them. A bus stopped at the junction and could not get up the hill. Its passengers climbed out, laughing, and walked the rest of the way.
Not everyone was delighted. A woman stood beside a car with a brush in her hand, scraping the windscreen and checking her watch. “It’s lovely,” she said, “but I have to get to work.”
By lunchtime, the pavements were a patchwork of slush and footprints. I had expected the snow to make the town feel shut away. Instead, people seemed to have found one another: offering a hand with a shovel, sharing the wide pavement, stopping to watch the children build their snowball. I went home with wet socks and a photograph of the park before anyone had walked across it.
Text 2: A white morning in Bellford, by Arthur Bell
An original letter to a local newspaper written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.
In this letter to a local newspaper, written in 1885, a resident recalls the first heavy snowfall of the winter in his town.
Sir, I write concerning the snow which fell upon Bellford on Tuesday morning. When I opened my shutters, the road was already white, and the familiar roofs appeared strangely altered. I confess I was pleased by the sight; the children in the next street, however, were pleased enough for us all.
They came out before breakfast, wrapped in coats and scarves, and set about making a snowman by the pump. Their voices carried across the square. Several adults stood watching from their doorways, smiling, though one man soon asked them to move away from his shop entrance.
The town’s usual business did not stop entirely. A cart made a slow passage through the main street, its wheels turning carefully, while a woman carrying a basket picked her way along the edge of the road. At the inn, a servant swept the steps clear. It was a modest effort, but it allowed those who came in from the cold to enter without slipping.
The snow had covered the roofs and walls with a clean white layer, yet by afternoon the road was marked with tracks and the edge of the square had turned grey. I do not share the view that a snowfall is a great inconvenience. It asks us to proceed more slowly, certainly; but for a few hours it gives even an ordinary street a different appearance, and makes the sound of children at play seem particularly welcome.
Both of these texts are about a heavy snowfall in a town.
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110 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 2.4 Comparing texts, covering 2.4.1 Critical comparison of two or more texts. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.