Analysing Non-Fiction and Fiction Texts in an English Language Exam

It’s important to take a different approach to analysing non-fiction and fiction texts if you want top marks in your English Language exam questions (GCSE, IGCSE, A Level or IB).

Written by: Nick Redgrove

Published

24 June 2024

Read time

9 minutes

Contents

What’s the difference between fiction and non-fiction texts?

Non-fiction texts are based on real-life people, events or situations, whereas fiction texts are made up. A newspaper review of the film Dune: Part 2 is a non-fiction text, but the movie itself and the novel it is based on — involving distant planets and alien species — are works of fiction.

Teacher tip

Although some exam boards will give you an anthology of texts for your English Language exam, you will often be asked to analyse an “unseen” text. This means you will probably never have seen the text before and cannot use any pre-prepared analysis.

I know this seems seems challenging, but it doesn't mean that you can’t revise for an English Language exam. Instead of revising knowledge, you can revise the approach and practise the skills needed to analyse unseen texts.

How to analyse non-fiction texts

Many exam texts will be examples of “non-fiction” so they are about real events and people, rather than invented situations.

Before you start analysing your text, it’s a good idea to perform what’s called GAP analysis (also known as the three Ws):

Genre	Audience	Purpose
What type of text, e.g. article, speech, etc.	Who the text is written for	Why the text been written

When analysing non-fiction, if an examiner can see you understand the conventions of a particular genre and a writer’s intentions, you can be awarded top marks.

Genre

Genre means the type of non-fiction text you may have to write about in an exam. Here are some examples:

Newspaper article	Speech	Letter
Diary entry	Biography	Autobiography
Report	Guide	Review

In your language paper, It’s important to identify the genre you have been given, and understand that each genre follows certain conventions, which are like the rules or expected features of that particular type of text. For example:

Genre	Conventions
Speech	Given by one person, usually to an audience Uses personal pronouns (“I”, “me”, “you”) Uses rhetorical devices Uses persuasive techniques to persuade the target audience to share the speaker’s point of view
Review	Written by a reviewer to a wide range of readers Readers often have a pre-existing interest in what is being reviewed Provides a rating, sometimes out of 5 or 10 Provides a brief summary of what is being reviewed Provides the writer’s opinion on what is being reviewed

For more details on which genres your exam may include, and for a step-by-step breakdown of the conventions of each, check out our GCSE English Language and IGCSE English Language pages.

Audience

Once you have identified the genre of a non-fiction text, you can identify its intended audience. These are the readers or listeners that the text has been written for.

Sometimes working out a text’s audience can be straightforward. For example, a diary entry, which is meant to be read only by its writer. Sometimes identifying an audience can be more challenging. However, being able to identify the audience and then comment on the relationship between a writer and their audience can lead to more sophisticated, top-grade analysis.

For example, if I know that a text is a 19th-century article, I can assume that the writer will be appealing to 19th-century attitudes and sensibilities. This can help me better understand why the writer might have expressed or described something in a certain way: it helps me analyse the writer’s intentions and word choices more effectively. Find out more about analysing 19th-century texts in English Language exams.

Teacher tip

Some exam boards will tell you the genre and audience of the non-fiction text, but many students miss this, as it is sometimes included as part of the rubric or exam instructions. In the rush of an exam, this information can be easily overlooked.

Examiners include useful information to introduce an unseen text in the exam paper insert, but some of this information is implied. For example, this rubric introduced a non-fiction text in an AQA GCSE English Language exam paper:

Source B is an extract taken from a magazine article written in 1872 by American journalist Fanny Fern. Here, she writes about her experience of being unable to sleep.

We are told about the genre (“a magazine article”). We also learn that this is written for a 19th-century magazine audience, that they are probably American, and that they are interested in the text’s informational purpose and reading a female perspective on the subject matter. Understanding all of this information will make your analysis all the richer.

Purpose

Once you’ve identified a text’s genre and audience, it should be fairly easy to determine what its purpose is. Again, the exam paper, or insert, may provide this information for you. The purpose of a piece of non-fiction could be:

To inform
To persuade
To argue
To entertain
To advise
To instruct
To describe

Once you’ve worked out what a text’s purpose is, you can begin to identify the words, phrases and literary devices a writer has used to help them achieve their purpose. So, for example, a writer might use direct address in a speech to appeal directly to their audience’s emotions as a persuasive strategy. These language techniques are sometimes called rhetorical devices, and some of the most sophisticated include:

If you can identify these rhetorical devices, always link them directly to the wider purpose of the non-fiction text: the writer’s intention. In your language analysis, try to make the link from what a writer is doing to how and why they are achieving their aims. This is the secret to English Language exam success.

Find out more about how to analyse language in an English Language exam.

How to analyse fiction texts

Other sections of your exam may ask you to analyse fictional texts. Although writers of fiction and non-fiction may use similar techniques, fiction writers are less likely to use the rhetorical devices listed above. Instead, they are more likely to use literary devices which include figurative language, emotive language, imagery (including metaphors and similes) and other techniques that help a writer convey meaning about the characters or setting.

When analysing fiction, there is no need to do GAP analysis, because all fiction aims to describe and entertain. Instead, remember that different writers try to elicit different emotional responses from their readers. Your job is to try to ascertain what emotional meaning a writer is trying to convey in their fictional text.

It’s important to identify a few key points before you start:

The narrative perspective of the text, and the writer’s point of view
Its principal characters (and protagonist)
The setting: the time (historical era, season and time of day) and place (geographical location and specific situation) of a text

Identifying these things will help you contextualise the text and focus your analysis.

Practical tips in an exam

Time is short in an exam, so it’s important that you have a clear plan when approaching both non-fiction and fiction texts in your English Language exam. Here are some of Save My Exams’ top exam tips.

Read — and understand — the question

Before you start reading or annotating your exam text, read the question carefully and identify its focus, underlining any key words. Once you know the theme or idea that the examiners want you to focus on, you should only pick out the language features and quotations that are relevant to the question.

Contextualise your extract

Before you start writing your answer, consider the fundamentals of the text you’ve been given. Jot down the “Four Ws” at the top of the extract:

	English Language	English Literature
What	What is the genre of the text?	What is the focus of the text? What is it about?
Where	Where would you expect to find the text?	Where is the passage set?
Who	Who is the intended audience?	Who are the principal characters?
Why	What is the purpose of the text?	What mood has the writer tried to create?

Annotate the essentials

Only annotate once you’ve read and understood the question so you only select relevant evidence for your analysis.

Try to be as efficient as possible when annotating:

Annotate or underline only the evidence that best answers the question
Keep your chosen evidence short: expertly chosen single-word quotes can be enough
Write in note form to save time

Track the text

To let examiners know that you are considering the text as a whole (and that you understand that a writer has constructed a piece of writing deliberately), try to comment on all sections of the text by making points (with supporting evidence) from the start, middle and end of the text, working through in chronological order. This is called “tracking the text”.

It sounds simple, but using sentence starters like “At the start of the extract, the writer has deliberately …” and “By the end of the text, the writer …” is a very effective exam trick, and can get you top marks even in an A Level exam.