Grade 11 · English

Grade 11 English

Grade 11 English expects independent analysis: longer and harder texts, essays that argue an interpretation, and research that uses sources well. Here is what the year covers, where students usually lose marks, and one way to help.

What your teen learns this year

Grade 11 English looks much the same across curricula:

  • Literature. Novels, plays (often Shakespeare), poetry and short fiction, including works from many cultures.
  • Narrators and perspective. Whose story is being told, and whether the teller can be trusted.
  • Literary essays. An arguable thesis, developed with well-chosen and well-explained evidence.
  • Research. Finding and evaluating sources, using them to support an argument, and citing them.
  • Rhetoric and media. How speeches, articles and media persuade, and writing persuasively in turn.

In Ontario, grade 11 English is taken as a university course (ENG3U), a college course (ENG3C) or a workplace course (ENG3E). In the US, it is often American Literature or AP Language.

Where students usually lose marks

  1. 1Treating a first-person narrator as a reliable witness. Everything they say comes through their own wishes and blind spots.
  2. 2Summarizing sources instead of using them. A research essay that reports what each source says, one after another, has no argument of its own.
  3. 3Quoting without analysing. Evidence earns marks only when the essay explains how it supports the point.

One of Pip's tricks

Can the narrator be trusted?

Use it when judging a first-person narrator, or answering a question about an unreliable narrator.

  1. Ask what the narrator wants the reader to believe about them.
  2. Ask what they could not know, and what they would rather not admit.
  3. Look for moments where other characters' words, or the events, contradict the narrator's account.

Watch it work. A narrator tells us he was “the only one in the family who tried to help”, then mentions in passing that his sister drove their mother to every appointment for a year. He wants to be seen as the helpful one, and he would rather not dwell on his sister. His own detail undercuts his claim, so his account is shaped by what he wants to be true.

Why it works: a narrator is a character with wishes and blind spots, and the reader learns the truth from the places where the telling and the evidence don't match.

Try three

Tap a choice to see if it is right, with the reason.

  1. 1.A narrator says he was “the only one who tried to help”, then mentions his sister drove their mother to every appointment for a year. The detail…

  2. 2.Which question tests a narrator's reliability?

  3. 3.A first-person narrator's account is…

How Sparkpip fits in

Pip, Sparkpip's tutor, works through texts and paragraphs like these with your teen one small step at a time, using methods like the one above.

Start freeSee how it works

Your curriculum

Sparkpip is built on the grade 11 English curriculum for your province or state. The official pages:

Also: Grade 10 English · Grade 12 English · Grade 11 math · Grade 11 science