Non-Fiction Language Lab
The 15-mark language question on a non-fiction text. Find the technique, quote it, explain what it does to the reader, and say why the writer wanted that.
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Fifteen marks for language 🔬
In Component 2 Section A you read two unseen non-fiction texts. **Question 3 is worth 15 marks** and asks one thing: how does the writer use LANGUAGE in a given part of Text 1? It is not a hunt for technical terms. The marks are for showing **what the words do to the reader**, and why a writer with a purpose would want that. This module works on one original extract all the way through.
What to look for 🧰
Non-fiction leans on a different toolkit from a novel. These are the ones that come up again and again:
The extract 🌊
An interactive activity.
What does it do? 🪞
The sea is "the colour of an unwashed window". What is the effect of choosing that comparison?
- It makes the sea sound grubby and ordinary, refusing to romanticise it
- It makes the sea sound beautiful and inviting
- It shows that the writer knows how to use a simile
- It tells the reader exactly what the weather was that day
The bit fiction does not need 🎯
This is where non-fiction analysis differs from analysing a novel. A non-fiction writer has a **purpose**: to persuade, to inform, to entertain, to argue, or several at once. So finish every point with the purpose link. Not "the simile makes the sea sound grubby" but "the simile makes the sea sound grubby, **so the reader trusts a writer who is not selling them a postcard**". The effect earns the mark; the purpose link is what pushes the answer up a band.
Match each technique to what it does to the reader
- Direct address: "You should try it"
- Rhetorical question: "why?"
- Personification: "it hates me"
- Short sentences: "Nobody is watching. Nobody is impressed."
- Turns the reader into someone being invited, almost dared
- Makes the reader supply the answer, so the doubt becomes theirs
- Turns the cold into an opponent with a grudge, which is funnier than "very cold"
- Lands the point flatly, with no room to argue
Two at once 🗣️
The extract says: "I stand on the shingle in a dressing gown that has seen better decades." Select the TWO things the writer is doing here.
- Using self-mocking humour, at their own expense
- Twisting a familiar phrase, since we expect "better days"
- Using a statistic to prove a point
- Using emotive language to make the reader angry
The turn at the end 👉
An interactive activity.
Same quotation, two answers ⚖️
Both of these students spotted the same thing. Only one of them is being paid for it.
Build the paragraph 🧱
An interactive activity.
Which one scores? 🏅
Which sentence is doing the analysis Question 3 rewards?
- The adverbs "slightly, stubbornly" hold back the claim, so the reader believes the small change rather than suspecting a sales pitch
- The writer uses adverbs in this sentence, which is effective
- The writer says that the world seems brighter for the rest of the day after the swim
- This part of the text made me feel quite cold and I did not enjoy it
The frame 📝
A reliable shape for every point: the writer uses _____, shown in a short _____, which makes the reader _____, because the purpose of the piece is to _____. Then narrow it down to a single _____.
Write one paragraph ✍️
An interactive activity.