Copy Question 3?

In February 2025 a student preparing for AQA’s GCSE English Language Paper 2 posted a question in an online revision chat.

“can I copy my answer [about] how writer uses language I used in question 3 to put in question 4 to save time”

The question sounds like a shortcut and like sensible time management at once. You can see why they asked. Question 3 asks how a writer uses language, and Question 4, which comes straight after it, also asks about the writer’s methods. The whole paper lasts one hour and 45 minutes for five questions, including a long piece of writing at the end.^[4] If a good paragraph about the writer’s language is already on the page, writing a second one about the same quotations looks like a waste of time the student does not have.

So is copying allowed? And even if it is allowed, does it help?

This article uses AQA’s papers as its example. Edexcel, Edexcel International GCSE, Eduqas and OCR also set a question on one text followed by a question that compares two texts. The section near the end names the matching questions on each of those boards.

Two questions, four differences

Here are the two questions from AQA’s June 2024 paper. Before reading on, try to spot every difference between them.

“You now need to refer only to Source A from lines 30 to 39. How does the writer use language to describe working night shifts at the hospital?”^[1]

“For this question, you need to refer to the whole of Source A, together with the whole of Source B. Compare how the writers convey their different feelings and perspectives on providing medical care.”^[1]

How many did you find? We counted four differences between the two questions. First, Question 3 covers ten lines of one source, while Question 4 covers the whole of both sources. Second, Question 3 asks about language, while Question 4 asks about the writers’ “feelings and perspectives”, meaning how each writer sees the subject. Third, Question 3 asks you to explain, while Question 4 asks you to compare. Fourth, Question 3 is worth 12 marks, while Question 4 is worth 16.

The pattern repeats on other papers. In every AQA Paper 2 we checked from 2022 to 2024, Question 4 opens with the same words about “the whole of Source A, together with the whole of Source B”.^[4] AQA’s sample paper for the exams from June 2026 opens Question 4 in the same way.^[5]

Two answers, probably two examiners

There is a second worry inside the student’s question. If a paragraph appears twice, will the examiner notice and mind?

As far as we understand, the person who marks Question 3 is usually not the person who marks Question 4. AQA’s Head of Marking has explained that when a paper gives students “a designated space” for each answer, the paper is “electronically segmented, which means that different examiners will mark different questions”.^[2] AQA’s own description of its marking says the same thing: “different questions are sent to different examiners so the final mark for any exam paper is the professional judgement of a number of experts”.^[3] The front of the Paper 2 question book tells students, “You must answer the questions in the spaces provided”.^[4]

We have not found AQA naming this paper in particular, so we hold this view with some care. If it is right, though, it answers the worry about repetition. The examiner for Question 4 will most likely never see the Question 3 answer, so reusing an idea should not cost any marks for repetition, but the risk lies elsewhere, in what the paragraph can earn.

The obvious shortcut, and why it fails

On repetition alone, the shortcut looks safe. Copy the Question 3 paragraph into Question 4 and move on to the writing task with time to spare.

The trouble is the mark scheme. The examiner for Question 4 marks against the Question 4 mark scheme, which asks for something a Question 3 paragraph was never built to give. It measures one assessment objective, called AO3, which AQA describes in these words.

“Compare writers’ ideas and perspectives, as well as how these are conveyed, across two or more texts.”^[1]

At the top level, the mark scheme describes an answer that “Compares ideas and perspectives in a perceptive way” and “selects a range of judicious supporting detail from both texts”.^[1] A paragraph copied from Question 3 talks about one source, draws on ten lines of it and compares nothing. However good it was for Question 3, it offers the Question 4 examiner almost none of what the top level describes.

AQA’s examiners have written about this kind of answer. In their report on the June 2023 paper, they said that in some Question 4 answers “methods had become so dominant that they eclipsed or perhaps even distracted the student from writing about the writers’ perspectives”.^[6] A Question 3 paragraph is almost entirely about methods.

They have also seen students reuse an earlier answer. In their report on the November 2024 paper, the examiners wrote that some students “reverted to material they had already produced in response to Q2”. The same report says this material “provided limited opportunity to explore attitudes”.^[7] That earlier answer was Question 2, not Question 3. The lesson is the same: an answer written for one question gives little to the next one.

It also costs time rather than saving it. AQA tells its examiners that “It is not the number of references, but the quality of the comments that will determine the level”.^[1] A long copied paragraph fills the answer space with comments that belong to another question, and the minutes spent copying it are taken away from the comparison, which is where the marks are.

The idea travels; the paragraph does not

Does that mean nothing from Question 3 can be used? No, and here the student’s instinct was right. The second bullet point under Question 4 invites students to “compare the methods they use to convey their feelings and perspectives”.^[1] Language is one of those methods. So a quotation you have already found, and an effect you have already worked out, are exactly the kind of material Question 4 can use. AQA’s report on the November 2021 paper adds one condition. Comments on methods “need to be explored in more detail and linked to the perspectives in order to be rewarded with marks in Level 3”.^[8]

What can travel from one question to the other is the idea: the quotation, together with what you noticed in it. What cannot travel is the paragraph, because the paragraph was built around the wrong job. The work that reusing an idea saves is the searching, which is real work in an exam, but the writing still has to be done again, for the new question.

The same quotation can appear in both answers. Nothing in the Question 4 mark scheme asks for quotations that were not used before, and the instructions to examiners judge “the quality of the comments” rather than where a quotation first appeared.^[1] What the same quotation cannot do is carry the same comment. In Question 3 the comment says what the language does to the reader. In Question 4 the comment has to say what the language shows about the writer’s view of the subject, and how that view differs from the other writer’s view.

One idea, moved

Here is how that looks, using the quotations printed in AQA’s own June 2024 mark scheme. For Question 3, the mark scheme shows a top-level comment about the doctor who writes Source A.

“The writer develops an extended metaphor to compare working a night shift to a nightmarish voyage at sea. He begins the metaphor with ‘sailing the ship alone’…”^[1]

It goes on to describe the ship as “enormous, and on fire”.^[1] That is a Question 3 idea, because it describes what a piece of language does and its effect on the reader.

Now the same idea, moved into Question 4. This sentence is ours, written to show the change.

Where the doctor in Source A pictures his night shift as “sailing the ship alone” on a ship “enormous, and on fire”, so that medical care becomes a lonely emergency he must survive, the nurse in Source B presents the same work through “the sympathy and brotherly love shown by the strong to the weak”, as if caring for patients were the loyal duty of a family.

The ship is still there, and so is the loneliness the Question 3 comment found in it. Three things have changed. First, the metaphor now answers a different question, about how the doctor sees medical care, rather than simply how he describes one night. Second, it has a partner, because Question 4 asks for detail “from both texts”.^[1] Third, the second quotation comes from Source B, a text that Question 3 never asked anyone to read closely.

A student who has already understood the ship in Question 3 can write that sentence faster than a student who meets it for the first time. The student in the revision chat wanted to save time. This is the honest way to do it, because the minutes saved go into the comparison that the mark scheme rewards.

The same choice on other boards

The same choice appears on several other boards. The question numbers and the marks are different. On each board below, one question asks about one text, and a later question asks students to compare two texts.

Edexcel GCSE English Language Paper 2. Question 3 asks students to “Analyse how the writer uses language and structure” in Text 1, for 15 marks. Question 7(b) asks them to “Compare how the writers of Text 1 and Text 2 present ideas and perspectives”, for 14 marks.^[9] The mark scheme for Question 7(b) says the mark “cannot progress beyond the top of Level 2 if only ONE text has been considered in detail”. Level 2 is 3 to 5 marks out of 14.^[10]

Edexcel International GCSE English Language A, Paper 1. Question 4 asks how the writer uses “language and structure in Text Two”, for 12 marks. Question 5 asks students to “Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives” in Text One and Text Two, for 22 marks.^[11] Text Two appears in both questions, so the temptation to copy is the same as on AQA. The mark scheme for Question 5 says that students who have “considered only ONE text may only achieve a mark up to the top of Level 2”. Level 2 is 5 to 8 marks out of 22.^[12]

Eduqas GCSE English Language Component 2. In Section A, the second question asks about one text, including “the use of language, tone and structure”, for 10 marks. The last question in Section A asks students to compare the two texts, also for 10 marks.^[13] The mark scheme says this last question “tests the ability to compare writers’ ideas and perspectives, as well as how these are conveyed, across the two texts”.^[14]

OCR GCSE English Language Paper 1 (J351/01). Question 3 asks students to explore how a writer “uses language and structure” in a set of lines, for 12 marks. Question 4 is worth 18 marks and uses both texts. Its mark scheme gives 12 of those marks for evaluating the texts and 6 for comparing them.^[15] In our reading, a copied Question 3 paragraph does neither of those two jobs.

Cambridge IGCSE First Language English (0500), Paper 1. We did not find this pair on Cambridge. No question in the June 2024 paper we checked asks students to compare two writers. The language question, Question 2(d), is followed by Question 3, which asks students to write a report in role, using the same text.^[16] We have only checked that one paper.

Two limits apply to this list. What we said earlier about different examiners marking different questions comes from AQA, and we have not checked how the other boards divide their marking. We have not compared CCEA papers.

Four things to do this week

1. Put the two questions side by side. Take any AQA Paper 2, or the matching pair on your child’s board from the list above, and write Question 3 and Question 4 one above the other. Circle each difference: which lines, how many sources, and what the question asks you to do.

2. Turn one Question 3 sentence into a Question 4 sentence. Choose a sentence from a Question 3 answer you have already written. Add what the quotation shows about how the writer sees the subject, and then add a quotation from the other source that sees it differently.

3. Check that both sources appear in every paragraph. Read through a Question 4 answer and mark each quotation A or B. A paragraph with only one letter in it is not comparing yet. AQA’s June 2023 report adds: “Comparisons must compare the same aspect in both texts”.^[6]

4. Look across the whole of both sources. Beside each Question 4 quotation, note whether it comes from the beginning, the middle or the end of its source. If every quotation comes from the lines you studied for Question 3, the answer is not yet using the whole of Source A.

If you would like to know where your child’s own writing stands today, our free assessment takes five minutes.

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