Source A: The voice at the desk

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

People often asked for somebody else. They were perfectly polite about it. I could be standing at the railway information desk, wearing the same jacket as my colleagues, when a passenger would hear my accent and look past my shoulder. Was there anyone who could explain the connection? I would explain it again. Sometimes the passenger thanked me. Sometimes a colleague repeated my answer and was thanked instead.

My accent belongs to the town. So do I. I know which platform becomes awkward with a pushchair, where the replacement buses stop and which footbridge surprises people with its stairs. I learned those things by working here, not by pronouncing every vowel in the way passengers expect authority to pronounce it.

For a while, I tried changing my voice. The effort occupied part of my attention that should have been available for listening. I would finish an answer and wonder how I had sounded, rather than whether I had understood the question. At home, my sister said I seemed to be auditioning for the job I already had.

It would be pleasant to end there, with a brave decision to be myself and a crowd of passengers suddenly becoming wiser. It did not happen like that. I grew more direct. I checked that people had the information they needed. Some still preferred an identical answer in another voice.

Then a new volunteer joined us. He spoke softly and paused before answering. During his first shift, I stepped in twice to finish explanations. On the third occasion, he asked whether I could let him complete the sentence. He had been checking the exact location of the accessible entrance. I had assumed the pause meant uncertainty.

Afterwards, I apologised. He said he was glad of help when he asked for it. That was all. I recognised the sentence because I had said versions of it to colleagues who thought they were rescuing me from my own voice.

Now I try to notice the small moment between hearing someone and deciding how much to believe them. It is not an empty moment. It arrives crowded with voices from television, school, family and work, all offering instructions about who sounds informed. At the desk, I cannot empty that crowd from every passenger's head. I can at least avoid adding my own assumption before the person in front of me has finished speaking.

Source B: From The Danger of a Single Story — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 2–3).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about how assumptions affect the way people listen to one another.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.