English Class 11 PDF Download – FA 1st Year 2025-26 PECTAA Edition

FA Part 1 students can download the new 2025-26 English textbook for Class 11 here for free. This book is published by Punjab Education, Curriculum, Training and Assessment Authority (PECTAA) and is based on the Revised National Curriculum of Pakistan 2023.

The new 2025-26 English book is a significant update from the older edition. It uses an integrated approach combining reading, grammar, oral communication, and writing skills in each unit. With 14 theme-based units, it prepares FA students for both board exams and real-world English communication.

Book Overview

Class	11th Class / 1st Year
Subject	English
Category	FA (Faculty of Arts)
Publisher	PECTAA (Punjab Education, Curriculum, Training and Assessment Authority)
Edition	2025-26 (Based on National Curriculum 2023)
Total Units	14
Total Pages	168
Format	PDF (Free Download)

Unit List

Unit 1: Khatam-un-Nabiyeen Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH)

This unit presents a biographical essay on Khatam-un-Nabiyeen Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH), tracing his life from his birth in Makkah in 571 A.D. through his orphaned childhood, his reputation as Al-Sadiq and Al-Amin, his marriage to Hazrat Khadijah, the first revelation in the Cave of Hira, the Hijrah, the Charter of Madinah, the Battle of Badr, the Conquest of Makkah, and the Farewell Sermon. Alongside comprehension questions and vocabulary work, it builds grammar skills through denotation/connotation, the eight parts of speech, subject-verb agreement, word-form transformation, and prepositions, plus explanatory essay and biographical sketch writing.

Important Questions:

• What titles did the people of Makkah give Rasoolullah (PBUH) because of his truthfulness and trustworthiness in trade? They called him Al-Sadiq (The Truthful) and Al-Amin (The Trustworthy).
• What was the significance of the first revelation to Rasoolullah (PBUH)? It marked the beginning of his mission as the last Rasool of Allah, bringing spiritual awakening and initiating a radical transformation of Arabia’s socio-political and moral fabric through the call to Tauhid.
• What was the Charter of Madinah, and how did it create a new system of governance? Crafted under Rasoolullah’s guidance in Madinah, it introduced governance rooted in civic equality, religious freedom, and the rule of law, uniting diverse communities and guaranteeing protection for all citizens regardless of faith or ethnicity.
• How did Rasoolullah (PBUH) demonstrate mercy during the Conquest of Makkah? Despite years of persecution, he declared a general amnesty, forgiving even his most ardent enemies, making the conquest an almost bloodless triumph of forgiveness over vengeance.

Unit 2: Responsibility of the Youth in Nation-Building

This unit presents excerpts from Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Convocation Address at Dhaka University (24 March 1948), urging graduates to embrace responsible citizenship in newly independent Pakistan. He stresses discipline, unity, and constructive effort over the old “militant spirit,” warns against the colonial mindset of chasing only government clerkships, and encourages diversifying into commerce, industry, technical education, and law. The unit builds critical reading and inference skills, vocabulary, all twelve English tenses, oral communication (group discussion, debate, role-play), and argumentative essay writing on “The Role of Education in Nation-Building,” plus Urdu translation practice.

Important Questions:

• Why does Quaid-e-Azam discourage the pursuit of government service as the sole ambition of graduates? He explains that government cannot absorb thousands of graduates, and chasing only clerkships breeds demoralization and a mentality left over from colonial rule; instead he urges youth toward commerce, industry, banking, trade, law, and technical fields.
• What does Quaid-e-Azam mean when he says that “freedom does not mean license”? He means independence does not give people the right to behave however they please regardless of others or the State; freedom instead brings a great responsibility to work as a united, disciplined nation.
• What historical event does Quaid-e-Azam reference to highlight Pakistan’s early struggles? He references the Punjab and Delhi holocaust, in which thousands were killed and millions of refugees were uprooted and had to be rehabilitated soon after Pakistan’s creation.
• What example does Quaid-e-Azam share to support his message about career opportunities beyond government service? He cites a young man who left government service to join a banking corporation on a starting salary of two hundred rupees and, within four years, became a manager earning fifteen hundred rupees a month.

Unit 3: A Bird Came Down the Walk (Poem)

This unit presents Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird Came Down the Walk,” a five-stanza poem observing a bird eating a worm, drinking dew, letting a beetle pass, and finally flying off after refusing an offered crumb, illustrating nature’s blend of beauty, brutality, and independence. Alongside close reading and theme analysis, the unit builds skills in identifying figures of speech (simile, personification, imagery, symbolism, euphemism, oxymoron), citing textual evidence for inferences, distinguishing fact from opinion and denotation from connotation, using compound prepositions correctly, and writing an objective summary and literary critique of the poem.

Important Questions:

• What is the bird’s initial action when it comes down the walk? It bites an angleworm in half and eats it raw.
• What does the bird do after the speaker offers it a crumb? The bird does not accept the crumb and instead flies away.
• Identify an example of simile in the poem. “They looked like frightened Beads, I thought” is a simile comparing the bird’s eyes to frightened beads using “like.”
• What is a compound preposition, and what is an example from the unit? A compound preposition is formed by prefixing a simple preposition with another word (e.g., in-, be-, under-, with-) and functions as a single-word preposition; examples given include “into,” “within,” “beside,” and “beneath.”

Unit 4: Team Moon

This unit presents “Team Moon,” an adaptation of Catherine Thimmesh’s book about the 400,000 people who worked together to land Apollo 11 on the Moon in 1969, including seamstresses who stitched the spacesuits, NASA engineers who built the Saturn V rocket, Mission Control flight controllers, and software engineer Margaret Hamilton, whose code helped save the lunar landing. Alongside comprehension and critical-thinking questions on plot, tone, and point of view, students practice identifying adjectival and adverbial phrases, constructing complex sentences with main and subordinate clauses, and writing a book review.

Important Questions:

• Why was the job of the seamstresses at Playtex so important for the Apollo 11 mission? They crafted the astronauts’ spacesuits, which had to be flexible yet strong enough to withstand space, so one misplaced stitch could have caused disaster.
• Who was Margaret Hamilton, and what was her role in the Apollo 11 mission? She was a software engineer who led the team that developed the onboard flight software for the lunar module, writing code that prioritised critical tasks and helped save the landing when the computer became overloaded.
• What happened at Mission Control when alarms suddenly blared as the lunar module “Eagle” descended toward the Moon? Flight controllers quickly determined the alarms were not mission-critical (the guidance computer was simply overloaded but still working), allowing Armstrong and Aldrin to continue their descent safely.
• What is an adjectival phrase, according to the unit’s grammar section? It is a group of words that functions like an adjective, describing or giving more information about a noun or pronoun, as in “the man covered in dust.”

Unit 5: Impact of Global Warming on Pakistan

This unit explores how global warming affects Pakistan through rising temperatures and heatwaves, melting glaciers in the Himalayas and Karakoram, more frequent extreme weather events, declining agriculture, coastal erosion, and threats to biodiversity, linking each challenge to Pakistan’s SDG 13 initiatives such as the Heatwave Management Plan and the Glacial Lake Outburst Flood project. Alongside comprehension and summary skills, students practice idioms and proverbs, subordinating and correlative conjunctions, transitional devices, dictionary/context-clue vocabulary work, and writing a 250-300 word informative essay on climate action.

Important Questions:

• What makes Pakistan particularly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming? Pakistan’s diverse geography (mountains, plains, coastline), heavy dependence on agriculture, rapid urbanization with inadequate infrastructure, limited financial and technical resources, and a population exceeding 220 million collectively increase its vulnerability.
• What is the connection between glacial melting and water scarcity in Pakistan? Melting glaciers in the Himalayas and Karakoram initially increase water flow and cause floods, but over time this leads to reduced water availability, threatening agriculture and drinking water supplies since the Indus River depends heavily on glacier melt.
• What long-term impact does the accelerated melting of glaciers have on water availability in Pakistan? Glacier melting rose from 10% in the 1980s to 30% in the 2020s, causing progressively significant reductions in the Indus River’s water flow.
• Which steps has Pakistan taken to address the risks of glacial melting? Pakistan implemented the Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) project under SDG 13, focusing on early warning systems and protective infrastructure.

Unit 6: The Echoing Green (Poem)

This unit presents William Blake’s poem “The Echoing Green,” which portrays the joyful play of children and the fond memories of the elderly on a green field, using the day’s progression from sunrise to sunset to symbolise the cycle of life and the passage of time. Alongside the poem, the unit builds students’ vocabulary through glossary words and connotation comparisons, develops grammar skills by identifying parts of speech, verb tenses, and sentence structures (simple, compound, complex), and strengthens writing through reference-to-context and paraphrasing exercises, plus oral group discussion practice.

Important Questions:

• What activities are taking place on the echoing green? Children are playing and enjoying sports on the green while old folk, like Old John, sit under an oak tree watching and laughing at their play.
• What role do the ‘old folk’ play in the scene described? The old folk, such as Old John, watch the children play and recall that they once had the same joys in their own youth, adding a sense of continuity between generations.
• What is the significance of the shift from lively activity to quietness as the poem progresses? The poem moves from the lively morning of children playing to the weary evening when the sun descends and sports end, mirroring the natural cycle of a day and, symbolically, the cycle of life.
• Identify and explain an example of personification in the poem. An example is “The sun does arise, / And make happy the skies,” where the sun is given the human ability to make the skies happy, contributing to the poem’s joyful, uplifting mood.

Unit 7: What You Do is What You Are

This unit presents Nickie McWhirter’s essay “What You Do Is What You Are,” which argues that society unfairly judges people’s worth by their job titles or employment status, dismissing the unemployed, retired, or low-paid as “just” a housewife, janitor, or bum while elevating high-status roles like vice-president. Alongside comprehension, fact/opinion, and precis-writing exercises, the unit builds skimming/scanning, vocabulary-in-context, and critical response skills, and teaches grammar through gerunds, infinitives, and participles, culminating in an analytical essay on equal respect for all professions.

Important Questions:

• Why does the author describe the way society defines people by their jobs as peculiar? McWhirter finds it peculiar because people are not “cast in bronze” by the jobs they hold or once held, yet society still values them solely based on employment rather than their actual contributions or character.
• Provide two examples the author uses to show how individuals are judged based on their employment status. The text cites Larry, a laid-off auto worker who is still called an “auto worker” though he sells encyclopaedias on weekends, and Tony, a retired teacher who volunteers with handicapped children but is only known as “a retired teacher.”
• Why does the author state that no one is ever described as “just” a vice-president? This reveals that society reserves the diminishing “just” label for low-paid or non-earning roles like cab driver or janitor, while high-prestige jobs are never discounted in this way.
• What is a gerund, and how does the unit illustrate its use as the subject of a sentence? A gerund is the -ing form of a verb functioning as a noun; the unit gives the example “Networking is crucial for entrepreneurs” to show a gerund used as a sentence’s subject.

Unit 8: Clean Water

This unit’s reading passage explains why clean water is essential for human health, ecosystems, agriculture, and economic development, citing statistics such as 2.2 billion people lacking safely managed drinking water and 829,000 annual deaths from contaminated water. It shows how scarcity, pollution, and inadequate infrastructure worsen the crisis, and calls for collaborative solutions like rainwater harvesting and education. Alongside comprehension work on cause-effect and fact-versus-opinion analysis, students build vocabulary through glossary and word-map exercises, distinguish commonly confused word pairs, and practice writing formal letters/emails on real-world civic issues.

Important Questions:

• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), how many people die each year from diarrhea caused by contaminated water? Around 829,000 people die each year from diarrhea caused by contaminated drinking water, sanitation, and hand hygiene.
• What percentage of the human body does water constitute, and what percentage of the planet does water cover? Water constitutes about 60% of the human body and covers roughly 70 percent of the planet.
• What are some community-based initiatives mentioned for improving access to clean drinking water? Community-based initiatives mentioned include rainwater harvesting, water conservation, and watershed management.
• What does “contaminated water” mean in the context of the passage? It refers to water that has been polluted and can harbor harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites, and chemicals.

Unit 9: Freedom (Poem)

“Freedom” by Langston Hughes is a five-stanza free-verse poem demanding immediate freedom and equality, rejecting compromise, fear, and passive waiting through metaphor (freedom as “a strong seed”), repetition, enjambment, and contrast. The unit pairs the poem with reading comprehension, MCQs, and vocabulary-in-context exercises, then builds core writing skills: standard capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and hyphenation conventions; correct use of the four aspects of time; oral communication through structured Q&A; and precis and summary writing, including drafting a summary and precis of the poem itself.

Important Questions:

• Whose perspective is the poem written from, and how does this perspective influence the poem’s message? The poem is written from a first-person perspective, which allows the poet to speak personally while also representing the collective voice of those denied freedom.
• Why does the poet reject the idea of “tomorrow’s bread”? The poet rejects it because freedom cannot be postponed or experienced only in the future — he needs and demands it now, not as something delayed like “tomorrow’s bread.”
• What is the effect of the metaphor “Freedom is a strong seed, planted in a great need”? It suggests that freedom is something that must be planted and grown, symbolizing growth arising from urgent necessity rather than something instantly given.
• What is the difference between a summary and a precis, according to the unit’s comparison? A summary gives a brief overview of main ideas in simpler, neutral language (about one-third the original length), while a precis is more concise (about one-fourth to one-fifth the length) and retains the author’s original tone and style.

Unit 10: The Punishment of Shahpesh, the Persian, on Khipil, the Builder

This unit presents George Meredith’s satirical story “The Punishment of Shahpesh, the Persian, on Khipil, the Builder,” about a loquacious builder who spends four years failing to finish the king’s palace while distracting everyone with fine talk. King Shahpesh punishes him through ironic mock-honours — forcing him into a gap that becomes a dunking, making him “sit” on a nonexistent throne under archers’ watch, and presenting him with nettles as flowers — exposing the danger of valuing words over deeds. Alongside the story, the unit builds skills in plot/character analysis, vocabulary, sentence patterns, punctuation, and narrative writing.

Important Questions:

• What was Shahpesh’s main reason for punishing Khipil? Khipil failed to complete the palace, spending four years talking about his craft instead of finishing the building.
• Why does Khipil hesitate to step forward into the gap? He hesitates because the gap is wide and deep with water below, and he does not know how to swim.
• What was Shahpesh’s final/ongoing punishment for Khipil regarding the “bath”? Shahpesh called Khipil’s fall into the water-filled gap “an apt contrivance for a bath” and declared it would be his daily reward whenever his talking tired the King.
• What is the theme of the story as stated in the unit? It is a satire on valuing words over deeds, warning that speech without responsibility or results leads to disgrace, as shown through Khipil’s punishment for hiding his negligence behind eloquence.

Unit 11: Those Winter Sundays (Poem)

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden is a free-verse poem in which an adult speaker recalls how his father rose early on cold winter mornings to light the fire and warm the house, his cracked hands aching from labour, while the child responded with indifference amid the home’s “chronic angers.” Only in hindsight does the speaker recognize this quiet labour as an unappreciated form of love. Alongside the poem, the unit builds skills in identifying literary devices (imagery, symbolism, alliteration, metaphor), drawing inferences from context, using dictionaries and thesauruses, applying punctuation correctly, paraphrasing, and writing a three-person dialogue with bracketed director’s-note narration.

Important Questions:

• What is Robert Hayden’s attitude towards the father’s sacrifices in the poem? Hayden portrays the father’s sacrifices with regret and belated appreciation, shown through details like his “cracked hands” and the line “No one ever thanked him.”
• Who is the central figure in the poem besides the speaker? The speaker’s father.
• How does the speaker describe the father’s hands? The father’s hands are described as cracked and aching from labour.
• What does the speaker mean by “chronic angers” in the house? It refers to a long-lasting, tense atmosphere in the home.

Unit 12: The Impact of AI on Society, Human Relationships, and Ethics

This unit examines how Artificial Intelligence is reshaping healthcare, education, finance, and entertainment through diagnostic tools, personalised learning, fraud detection, and content recommendations, while also raising concerns about job displacement, weakened human relationships due to overreliance on digital communication, and ethical issues like privacy, bias, and accountability. Alongside the reading passage, students build word maps for terms such as automation, bias, and privacy, practise converting indirect speech into direct speech with correct tense and pronoun shifts, and write a 300-400 word short story exploring AI’s impact on an individual’s relationships and ethical choices.

Important Questions:

• How does AI assist doctors in diagnosing diseases and predicting patient outcomes? AI-powered diagnostic tools, such as image recognition software, help identify diseases like cancer at an early stage, which improves patient outcomes.
• What is one of the main concerns associated with the widespread use of AI? Job displacement, as AI systems increasingly perform repetitive or skilled tasks once done by humans (for example, self-checkout systems replacing cashiers).
• What is a potential risk of excessive reliance on AI-powered communication tools? Social isolation and a decline in the quality of human relationships, as people spend more time interacting with devices than with family and friends.
• What ethical guidelines does the unit say should govern AI use? The unit lists transparency, fairness, privacy protection, accountability, and continuous monitoring as key principles for the responsible use of AI.

Unit 13: Ruba’iyat (Poem)

This unit presents Ruba’iyat, quatrains by Allama Muhammad Iqbal contrasting true faith — shown through Hazrat Abraham’s willingness to endure fire — with the spiritual emptiness of Europe and the weakened devotion of modern Muslims, whose “blood runs thin” and prayers have gone cold. Students study the poem’s rhyme scheme and devices like metaphor, paradox, and personification, then build language skills: identifying figurative language, converting tenses and sentence types in indirect/direct speech, expanding vocabulary using dictionaries and thesauruses, and writing a descriptive composition profiling a “God-drunk” spiritual figure through brainstorming and drafting.

Important Questions:

• What does Allama Muhammad Iqbal mean by describing faith as being “God-drunk”? It means being completely intoxicated with divine love and fully absorbed in devotion to God, a paradox pairing intoxication with divine ecstasy.
• Why does the poet claim that having no faith is “worse than slavery”? Because for Iqbal, lacking faith represents a form of spiritual bondage even more degrading than physical slavery, since it strips a person of self-honoring, God-drunk devotion.
• What does “blood runs thin” metaphorically represent? It represents the loss of spiritual vitality and passion among Muslims, whose “Love’s madness has departed.”
• What does the metaphor “Abraham at the stake” primarily represent in the poem? It represents unwavering faith in God, referencing Hazrat Abraham’s willingness to endure fire rather than abandon his devotion.

Unit 14: The End of the Beginning

This unit presents “The End of the Beginning,” a one-act farcical comedy by Irish playwright Seán O’Casey, in which overconfident farmer Darry Berrill swaps roles with his wife Lizzie to prove housework is easy, only to create chaos with his inept friend Barry Derrill, learning humility about the true value of domestic work. Through this play, students build skills in establishing character and plot in drama, verifying inferred word meanings against dictionary definitions, and applying editing and proofreading techniques, alongside identifying sentence types and practicing dialogue writing.

Important Questions:

• What task does Darry attempt to do in the play? He attempts to complete the household chores while Lizzie goes to mow the meadow.
• How does Darry feel about doing the housework before he attempts it? He feels confident, boasting that he could do the housework better and more quickly than Lizzie.
• Which literary technique is primarily used in the play to highlight the absurdity of Darry’s attempts? Farce is the primary literary technique used to highlight the absurdity of Darry’s attempts.
• What is the primary theme explored in the play? The primary theme is gender roles and stereotypes in domestic life, showing that skill comes from experience rather than gender.

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Download English Class 11 PECTAA 2025-26 PDF

Click the button below to download the new 2025-26 PECTAA English textbook for Class 11 for free.

⬇ Download PDF (2025-26 PECTAA Edition)

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Who Should Read This

This book is for all FA, FSC, ICS, and ICOM Part 1 students studying English under the new 2025-26 Punjab Board curriculum. Students currently appearing in board exams under the National Curriculum 2023 should use this edition. The integrated approach of reading, grammar, writing, and oral skills in each unit makes it much more practical than older editions.

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Applicable Boards

This PECTAA textbook is used across all Punjab Board affiliated colleges — Lahore Board, Faisalabad Board, Gujranwala Board, Multan Board, Rawalpindi Board, Sargodha Board, DG Khan Board, and Sahiwal Board.

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