Edexcel A Level English Literature (9ET0) Past Papers 2026

Drama

Duration: 2h 15m

Prose

Duration: 1h 15m

Poetry

Duration: 2h 15m

NEA / Coursework

Duration: 2500–3000 words (coursework)

Form, structure and metre in poetry

Candidates routinely default to language and imagery and avoid form, metre, rhyme scheme and structural development. 'There is a tendency for some candidates to identify poetic techniques (such as the ubiquitous asyndetic listing, enjambment, caesura, and rhyme scheme) as if these in and of themselves convey meaning.'

Paper 3

Unseen poem — establishing literal meaning before metaphorical reading

'Weaker responses took language too literally. For example, claiming that the homeless were dirty or that the park was full of dangerous people. The best responses could see the satirical nature of the poem.' Some candidates fail to grasp the literal subject before imposing metaphor.

Paper 3

Drama as performance — staging, audience, dramatic methods

Many Paper 1 candidates discuss Shakespeare and Webster as if reading a novel. 'Some candidates struggled to explicitly address the question of human weakness though there were some thoughtful considerations of individual weaknesses.' Strong responses 'never forget that Dr Faustus is a piece of drama to be performed before an audience.'

Paper 1

Chaucer — analysing the poetic language vs translating it

'Centres are also reminded that candidates do not need to spend time ‘translating’ Chaucer and they should analyse the language used in the text, not in their own translation.'

Paper 3

Periodisation — treating Modernism, the Romantics or Victorian poetry as a single fixed worldview

'centres should be reminded that the Victorian era covers a huge number of years of social and literary change, and candidates should avoid writing about a fixed Victorian viewpoint.' 'Modernism was not a unified movement or concept.'

Paper 3

AO5 in NEA Section B — confused with AO3, with secondary reading credited twice

’There was some evidence of conflation of AO3 and 5 in the marking by some centres, with candidate’s bibliographies and points drawing on sociology and psychology (A03 where relevant) being credited as AO5.’ This marking error pattern was flagged in NEA (Paper 4) moderation, since the NEA is the only component where AO3 and AO5 are both assessed and can be conflated.

Paper 4

Choice of second extract (Chaucer) or second poem (anthology) — under-signalled or weakly chosen

'It was also noted that some candidates attempting the Chaucer questions did not choose a specific second extract and either purely focused on the named extract, or ranged across the whole text. The better examples for these questions clearly identified the line numbers of the second extract, often in the introduction.'

Paper 3

AO2 in dystopia and prose — analysing events and concepts instead of crafting

'For the popular dystopian texts, particularly Nineteen Eighty-Four, candidates working at Level 3 often had their achievement limited by an approach that focused on discussing events and concepts rather than crafting. AO2 was occasionally forgotten about, whilst AO3 relied on attempting to match features of a writer’s dystopian vision to historical events.'

Paper 2