English 30-2 Diploma study guide

English 30-2 Diploma · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

The English 30-2 Diploma Examination is the provincial assessment that Grade 12 students in Alberta write at the end of English Language Arts 30-2, the non-diploma-track (or "2" stream) senior English course. It is intended for students who need a Grade 12 English credential for graduation or post-secondary entrance but who are not pursuing the academic 30-1 route. According to Alberta Education, the Grade 12 Diploma Examinations Program exists for three purposes: to certify the level of individual student achievement in selected Grade 12 courses, to ensure that provincewide standards of achievement are maintained, and to report individual and group results. The exam has two parts. Topics on this exam: Part A: Written Response and Part B: Reading Comprehension (Multiple Choice). The English 30-2 Diploma study guide has 2 sections and about 727 words.

Part A: Written Response - Personal Response and Critical/Analytical Writing

Part A asks you to produce two finished pieces of writing under time pressure: a personal response to texts and a critical/analytical response to literary texts . Both are scored on how well you think , not on how much you write. In the personal response, a prompt (often an idea such as "the value of struggle" or "the cost of belonging") is paired with short texts. You must build a focused, organized discussion of the idea.

381 words, about 2 min 02

Part B: Reading Comprehension - Multiple Choice Strategies

Part B presents a range of selections - informational, narrative, poetic, and sometimes visual or multimodal - each followed by multiple-choice questions. The questions test more than literal recall: expect main idea and theme, inference, author's purpose and tone, literary and rhetorical devices, vocabulary in context, text structure, and synthesis across or between texts . Be able to distinguish tone (the speaker's attitude) from mood (the feeling created in the reader), and purpose (why the text was written) from subject (what it is about). Know common devices by name and function - simile, metaphor, personification, imagery, irony, allusion, repetition, juxtaposition - and, crucially, be able to say what effect each creates.

346 words, about 2 min