English Language Arts 10

First Peoples narratives often use cyclical, iterative, or circular structures — the story can circle back, repeat with variation, or resist a single "ending" — because oral tradition and connection to land shape the form.

First Peoples stories often have protocols for when and where they can be shared, who owns them, and who can share them — ownership is not automatically public just because a story is old or widely known.

Story and oral tradition are how First Peoples perspectives, values, beliefs, and points of view get carried forward — a story is doing cultural and historical work, not just entertaining.

Readers use many strategies to "unpack" a text with increasing independence, choosing them based on purpose, text, and context: predicting, inferring, questioning, paraphrasing, using context clues, using text features, visualizing, making connections, summarizing, identifying big ideas, synthesizing, and reflecting.

Metacognition means thinking about your own thinking — catching the moment comprehension slips ("wait, I lost the thread here") instead of ploughing on and hoping it resolves itself.

Relevance asks whether a source actually applies to your question or topic; accuracy asks whether its facts check out; reliability asks whether the source and its author are credible enough to trust.

Ideas can be explored at three levels: within a single text (what is this text actually saying), between multiple texts (how do two texts speak to or contradict each other), and beyond texts (what does this connect to in the wider world).

Every text carries personal context (the writer's own life and experience), social context (the community and time it was written in), and cultural context (shared beliefs, traditions, and values) — all of which shape what the text says and how.

Bias shows up as slanted language, one-sided framing, or information deliberately left out; a contradiction is when a text's claims don't line up with each other or with outside facts; a distortion misrepresents something (exaggerating, oversimplifying, or twisting facts).

These three checks are distinct — a source can be current and well-written (relevant) while still getting facts wrong (inaccurate), or accurate on one point while coming from an untrustworthy source overall (unreliable).

Language features are the writer's toolkit: figurative language (metaphor, simile), sentence variety (short vs. long, simple vs. complex), precise diction (the exact word, not a close-enough one), and sound devices (alliteration, rhythm).

Elements of style are the stylistic choices that make one specific writer distinguishable from others: diction, vocabulary, sentence structure, and tone, working together rather than in isolation.

Voice is shaped first by who is speaking and from what stance — point of view (first, second, third person), perspective (the vantage point on events), and persona (a constructed identity a writer adopts that may not be their own).

Texts use a range of literary devices — figurative language, symbolism, foreshadowing, irony, imagery, and more — according to their specific purpose and audience.

Form is the writer's choice based on purpose (narrative, journal, procedural/expository/explanatory document, news article, email, blog, advertisement, poetry, novel, letter); format covers layout, sequencing, spacing, typography, and colour; structure is how the text is organized (cause/effect, compare/contrast, order of importance, chronological, problem/solution, circular/cyclical); features are elements outside the main body (navigational aids like headings and footnotes, or illustrations like graphs and photographs).

Oral language strategies include speaking with expression, connecting to listeners, asking questions to clarify, listening for specifics, summarizing, and paraphrasing.

Writing processes vary by context but may include determining audience and purpose, generating or gathering ideas, free-writing, making notes, drafting, revising, and/or editing — writing is an iterative process, not a single pass.

Design is a process with its own planning: deciding layout, choosing or creating images, and sequencing a multimedia or visual text so the visual choices support the content instead of fighting it.

Usage errors are specific, nameable problems: double negatives ("I don't need no help"), mixed metaphors (combining two images that clash, like "we'll cross that bridge when we burn it"), malapropisms (a wrong word that sounds like the right one, like "for all intensive purposes"), and word misuse.

Citation techniques let you accurately acknowledge sources — keeping a record of where borrowed words, ideas, and evidence came from, in whatever citation style a given piece of writing calls for.