Eduqas A-Level English Language and Literature: Component 3 Non-Literary Texts, a complete overview

What Component 3 demands

Component 3, Non-Literary Texts, is the third written paper (2 hours, 20 percent) and it extends the integrated method to texts beyond literature: spoken language and non-literary writing. Section A compares unseen spoken and non-literary texts; Section B analyses a studied non-literary prose text. The paper tests the tools of spoken-language and non-literary analysis, mode-aware and comparative, alongside the integrated method. This overview pulls together the five things the module asks: the structure of the paper, analysing spoken texts, analysing non-literary texts, building the unseen comparison, and the studied non-literary text, with mode, audience and purpose as the contextual frame throughout. Each has its own dot-point page with practice questions.

The shape of the paper

Section A is a comparison of unseen spoken and non-literary texts loading AO1, AO2, AO3 and AO4 (AO4 prominent). Section B analyses a studied non-literary prose text loading AO1, AO2 and AO3. Mode, audience and purpose are the dominant contexts across the whole component, more than the period and tradition that lead in the literature papers.

Spoken and non-literary analysis

Read spoken texts as interaction (discourse, pragmatics, spontaneity features) and planned speeches as scripted-spoken hybrids; do not treat a transcript like writing. Read non-literary and multimodal texts with the language levels to the effect of positioning the reader, and graphology where they are multimodal. Much prescribed non-fiction is literary non-fiction, so read its literary techniques too.

The unseen comparison

Build the Section A comparison around shared ideas with all texts live, using mode as the sharpest hinge, and read each text with its mode-specific tools. The test of genuine AO4 is that each point exists only as comparison.

The studied non-literary text

Section B analyses a studied non-literary prose text (often literary non-fiction) with the integrated method and the literary methods together: voice, focalisation, suspense, evaluative lexis, framed by genre and purpose, anchored in moments but reaching across the text. Read the craft, not the content.

Check your knowledge

A mix of recall and applied questions on Component 3. Attempt them, then check against the solutions.

1. How is Component 3 structured, and what is its weighting? (2 marks)
2. Why must a transcript be analysed as interaction, not prose? (2 marks)
3. What do spontaneous speech features signal? (2 marks)
4. What is a non-literary text read for? (2 marks)
5. Why read literary technique in prescribed non-fiction? (2 marks)
6. What is the test of a genuine comparison of unseen texts? (2 marks)
7. Why is mode often the sharpest comparative hinge? (2 marks)
8. What is the dominant context (AO3) for these texts? (2 marks)
9. What is the most common error on the studied non-literary text? (2 marks)