Grade 11 · Alberta
English 20-1: reading closely, writing clearly
Six units built around what the course actually asks you to do: read prose, poetry and visual texts closely, name techniques and their effects, and write both a personal response and a critical essay. Practice questions and quizzes, with every answer explained.
Explore English 20-1
6 units · 72 questions
Units
Concepts, practice questions and quizzes for every unit: Close reading, Story, Devices and language, Poetry, Personal response, Critical essay.
Browse the units
11 printable sheets
Worksheets
Ten mixed questions per sheet with room to show work, and an answer key that prints on its own page.
Print a worksheet
2 deep dives
Toolkits
The ideas that show up everywhere, explained in full: saying what a device does, the paragraph that scores and more.
Open the toolkits
Studying for the exam?
Mix every unit together
Build a random quiz drawn from all 72 questions across every unit, at the level you choose. It is the closest thing here to a real exam.
About this course
English 20-1 is a skills course with no set text list, so these units are organized around what you are asked to do rather than around particular books. Four of them are about reading anything closely — prose, poetry and visual texts — and two are about the writing: the personal response and the critical and analytical essay.
There is no diploma exam in Grade 11, so your school sets the final. The two written assignments are the same shape as the ones on the English 30-1 diploma, which is why it is worth getting the habits right a year early.
Because you choose your own texts for the critical essay, nothing here depends on a particular novel or play.