4.3 - Paper 2 Q2: Inferring differences across two sources

Read the clarified task

From summer 2026, the controlling instruction and final stem in AQA's clarified sample make the required thinking direct:

You need to refer to Source A and Source B for this question. […] What can you infer about the differences between the two trains?

The topic will change, but the decision remains stable. The question names a focus—in the sample, the trains—and asks what the two sources allow you to infer about a difference within that focus. An inference moves beyond copying a fact, but it must remain made likely by the text.

Question 2 is worth 8 marks and assesses both AO1 bullets:

• identify and interpret explicit and implicit information and ideas;
• select and synthesise evidence from different texts.

Both sources are therefore essential. In AQA's updated sample mark scheme, a one-text response judged at Level 1 receives 1 rather than 2 marks, and one judged at Level 2 receives 3 rather than 4; reaching Level 3 or above requires both texts and the correct focus. This is not a quotation-count rule. It shows that a developed paragraph about only one source cannot substitute for synthesis.

Source control comes from the Paper 2 orientation: one source is non-fiction and one is literary non-fiction; one is nineteenth-century, while the other is twentieth- or twenty-first-century according to the period used for Paper 1 in that series. This lesson therefore pairs modern non-fiction with nineteenth-century literary non-fiction.

Question 2 asks what the sources reveal, not how the writers create effects. A method label earns nothing by itself; if it happens to lead into a relevant AO1 inference, only that supported inference addresses this task. Begin with meaning: what is different, and what detail from each source makes that relationship defensible?

Model a like-for-like inference

Read both complete sources for their situations before comparing them.

Source A — contemporary non-fiction

An overnight backpacker must collect a permit and camp at the assigned site. The visitor carries a tent and other equipment, but the stay is governed by safety and conservation rules: food, scented items and rubbish must be secured in a lockable bear-resistant canister away from the tent; campfires are prohibited; a portable stove must be used; and water collected outdoors must be treated. Campers must also carry their rubbish back out of the wilderness.

Source B — nineteenth-century literary non-fiction

Adapted for length and clarity from Isabella L. Bird, A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879), describing events during her 1873 journey. Public domain.

After losing the route, Bird and her companions returned after dark to a deserted log camp. They had no food, but made a fire. Bird lay on dry grass with an “inverted saddle for a pillow” and slept until intense frost and the pain of her cuts woke her. The horses had not been tied securely and wandered away; the group's water was also gone. Bird regarded these hardships as preventable rather than unavoidable features of the landscape.

The focus is differences in how the overnight stays were managed. An expert decision develops in stages:

1. Source A describes a stay planned within a system; Source B describes an emergency stop after the travellers become lost.
2. A useful shared axis is preparation and control. It can be applied to both sources without changing category.

1. Source A suggests risks are anticipated: the permit, assigned site and storage rules organise behaviour before problems arise. Source B suggests risks are handled through improvisation: the group arrives without food, lights a fire and fails to secure the horses.
2. A second like-for-like difference concerns basic comfort. Modern campers bring a tent and equipment; Bird sleeps on grass with a saddle for a pillow.

A plausible alternative is to write, “Source A gives instructions, whereas Source B uses first person.” That observation may be true, but it compares presentation rather than management of the stays. Another weak choice is to match “bear-resistant canister” with “saddle”: the objects come from different conceptual categories, so the reader still has to invent the relationship.

One concise synthesis could be:

The modern stay is planned and tightly controlled, whereas Bird's is an improvised response to becoming lost. Source A's permit, assigned site and food-storage rules suggest that foreseeable risks are managed before the camper arrives; in Source B, the lack of food and the unsecured horses show that the group is poorly prepared and reacts only after difficulties occur. Comfort is also more deliberately provided in Source A because campers carry shelter and equipment, while Bird sleeps on grass using her saddle as a pillow.

The response does not explain the effects of wording. It makes two relevant inferences, pairs like with like and uses the smallest details needed to support the relationship.

Build the relationship

Now keep one scaffold: the comparison axis is supplied. The likely error is selection, so there is also a short evidence list containing one tempting but weak option. If you can already state and support the relationship, ignore the list; the next task removes it.