Course Description:

This course extends students’ literacy skills and ability to apply learning strategies effectively, and teaches them how to use community resources to enhance lifelong learning. Students will communicate with increased accuracy and fluency for a variety of academic and everyday purposes; perform a variety of guided reading, writing, and viewing tasks; and use media and community resources to complete guided-research projects. This course further develops the critical thinking skills students will need to participate in Canadian society as informed citizens.

Listening and Speaking

Overall Expectations

By the end of this course, students will:

  1. demonstrate the ability to understand, interpret, and evaluate spoken English for a variety of purposes;
  2. use speaking skills and strategies to communicate in English for a variety of classroom and social purposes;
  3. use correctly the language structures appropriate for this level to communicate orally in English.

Reading

Overall Expectations

By the end of this course, students will:

  1. read and demonstrate understanding of a variety of texts for different purposes;
  2. use a variety of reading strategies throughout the reading process to extract meaning from texts;
  3. use a variety of strategies to build vocabulary;
  4. locate and extract relevant information from written and graphic texts for a variety of purposes.

Writing

Overall Expectations

By the end of this course, students will:

  1. write in a variety of forms for different purposes and audiences;
  2. organize ideas coherently in writing;
  3. use correctly the conventions of written English appropriate for this level, including grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation;
  4. use the stages of the writing process.

Socio-cultural Competence and Media Literacy

Overall Expectations

By the end of this course, students will:

  1. use English and non-verbal communication strategies appropriately in a variety of social contexts;
  2. demonstrate an understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship, and of the contributions of diverse groups to Canadian society;
  3. demonstrate knowledge of and adaptation to the Ontario education system;
  4. demonstrate an understanding of, interpret, and create a variety of media texts.