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Alabama Standards

Alabama 11th Grade ELA Standards

All 37 Alabama English language arts standards for 11th grade, each explained in plain English. The official wording is in Alabama State Department of Education's document, linked at the end of this page.

37 standards

Recurring Standards for Grades 9-12

7 standards
11.R1
Read everyday print and nonprint documents, like a college application or a voter guide, to learn new information and act on what society and work require.
11.R2
Read many kinds of literature, like an American short story or poem, for what happens on the surface and what it means beneath, as the genre and purpose require.
11.R3
Listen with full attention in conversations both formal and casual, like a seminar or a peer conference, honoring the discussion norms set beforehand.
11.R4
Work with technology safely, fittingly, and ethically, like citing online sources and keeping personal data private in shared documents.
11.R5
Move a piece, like a college admissions essay, through planning, revising, peer and self editing, and rewriting until it is focused, organized, and fits its readers.
11.R6
Follow the rules of grammar, mechanics, and usage, like using parallel structure, so a message reaches its target audience clearly.
11.R7
Use the surrounding words to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words in texts and speech, like an older term in an American historical document.

Critical Literacy

14 standards
11.1
Read, analyze, and judge complex fiction and nonfiction from many viewpoints and cultures, with a focus on American literature, like The Great Gatsby.
11.2
Combine information from two or more graphics, like a map and a population chart, to reach conclusions, support claims, and make decisions.
11.3
Analyze how a writer openly shows their cultural viewpoint while building style and meaning, like Zora Neale Hurston's use of Southern Black dialect.
11.4
Analyze how a writer builds meaning through point of view, characterization, literary elements, and figurative language, like Nick Carraway's narration in Gatsby.
11.5
Judge how the structure and genre of literary, informational, digital, and multimodal texts serve the author's purpose, like a speech versus a blog post on one issue.
11.6
Use what a text states directly and what it suggests to infer its theme and figure out why the author wrote it, like reading between the lines of a Dickinson poem.
11.7
Compare or contrast perspectives in stories, articles, websites, and multimodal works from different times, cultures, and countries, beyond the American literature focus.
11.8
Read and evaluate texts in science, social studies, and other fields, then explain how each uses specialized vocabulary and organizes information, like a journal article.
11.9
Carry out a specific task by following the steps in technical materials, like a software setup guide.
11.10
Listen actively to judge a speaker's tone, structure, message, and body language, deciding what they aim to do and whether they can be trusted, like a campaign speech.
11.11
Write and edit short and long pieces, like explanations of complex ideas with cited sources and arguments that end on larger implications, adding narrative touches.
11.12
Write together in diverse groups, compromising when needed to meet the goal, sharing the workload, and respecting what each member contributes, like a co-authored report.
11.13
Combine information from several sources, including varied media, check each one for credibility and accuracy, and share what you learned aloud.
11.14
Discuss texts with peers from varied cultural and literary viewpoints, responding to, extending, and challenging others' ideas with fitting evidence and commentary.

Digital Literacy

4 standards
11.15
Analyze digital texts, like a nonprofit's website, and judge how well they handle subject, occasion, audience, purpose, tone, and credibility.
11.16
Analyze the parts of digital audio, like a podcast or recorded speech, and judge how well it handles subject, occasion, audience, purpose, tone, and credibility.
11.17
Add images, sound, animation, or other media to create or improve solo or group digital projects, like a narrated photo essay, fitting the audience and occasion.
11.18
Combine each group member's work into one spoken presentation and deliver it, like a panel on an American author, with purpose and tone fit for the audience.

Language Literacy

5 standards
11.19
Interpret how an author's grammar and rhetoric shape meaning in poetry, prose, and nonfiction, like the repetition in a Lincoln speech or a company report.
11.20
Analyze how formal or casual spoken language is in various audio sources, like a news broadcast versus a vlog, to understand, interpret, and respond appropriately.
11.21
Analyze a speaker's rhetorical, artistic, and structural choices to find their point of view and purpose and judge how effective they are, like an inaugural address.
11.22
Follow standard English grammar, mechanics, and usage at the right level of formality for the audience, writing with a complex, sophisticated style.
11.23
Give a speech with a clear purpose to a real audience, like a school board or community group, using formal English when the situation calls for it.

Research Literacy

7 standards
11.24
Judge source credibility by authority, relevance, accuracy, and purpose, and weigh how well written information supports a research question, a solution, or a position.
11.25
Combine search engines, databases, and research strategies, like narrowing results by date and domain, to find sources you can trust.
11.26
Find audio information, like recorded lectures, to solve a problem, answer a question, or defend a view, listening actively to judge usefulness, relevance, and credibility.
11.27
Gather information ethically, combine research findings, and write clear, coherent work with skillful language that suits the audience and purpose.
11.28
Work ethically gathered facts from three or more source types, one a chart or statistic, into research, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, and citing in one style.
11.29
Write clearly and coherently from a mix of scholarly and popular sources to take a firm stand, answer a research question, or propose a fix for a problem.
11.30
Combine ethically gathered research into a clear, coherent product and present it aloud with skillful language, like a spoken report to the class.

The official Alabama documents

The plain-English lines on this page are EMStudio's own explanations of Alabama's standards, not the official wording, which Alabama State Department of Education publishes in the documents above. Codes and strand names identify each standard.