English Language Arts 10

Unit 1: Reading and Comprehending Texts

The receptive spine of the course: comprehending a wide range of texts, deploying reading and metacognitive strategies, distinguishing literal from inferential meaning, and reading First Peoples texts on their own terms — their narrative structures, ownership protocols, oral tradition, and connection to land and place.

• Narrative structures in First Peoples texts

• Protocols for the ownership of First Peoples oral texts

• The role of story, narrative, and oral tradition in First Peoples texts
• The influence of land and place in First Peoples and Canadian texts

• Reading strategies for making sense of a text

• Metacognitive strategies — thinking about your own thinking

• Literal meaning vs. inferential meaning in texts

• Comprehending written, oral, visual, and multimodal texts

Unit 2: Critical Reading: Context, Bias & Reliability

The critical-literacy strand: evaluating whether a source is relevant, accurate, and reliable; thinking critically, creatively, and reflectively about ideas within, between, and beyond texts; recognizing the personal, social, and cultural contexts and perspectives that shape a text; and identifying bias, contradictions, and distortions.

• Evaluating the relevance, accuracy, and reliability of a source

• Thinking critically and creatively about ideas within, between, and beyond texts

• Recognizing contexts, values, and perspectives in a text

• Identifying bias, contradictions, and distortions in a text

Unit 3: Analyzing Craft: Style, Voice & Literary Devices

The literary-analysis strand: language features that carry meaning, the elements of style that make a writer distinguishable, voice explored through point of view and tone, literary devices including figurative language, and analyzing how a text's forms, formats, structures, and features shape its meaning and impact.

• Language features that carry meaning in a text

• Elements of style — diction, vocabulary, sentence structure, tone

• Voice: point of view, perspective, and persona
• Voice through humour, irony, satire, and wit

• Literary elements and devices, including figurative language

• How forms, structures, and features of texts shape meaning and impact

Unit 4: Composing and Communicating

The productive "Create and communicate" strand: speaking and listening with purpose, moving through writing and design processes, applying usage and conventions, citing sources, refining texts for clarity and impact, and composing meaningful texts — including opinions supported with evidence — for real purposes and audiences.

• Oral language strategies (speaking with expression, clarifying, summarizing)

• Writing processes — from gathering ideas to editing

• Design processes for shaping a text's layout and format

• Usage — avoiding double negatives, mixed metaphors, malapropisms, word misuse
• Conventions — standard punctuation, capitalization, quoting, Canadian spelling

• Citation techniques for acknowledging sources

• Revising and refining your writing for clarity and impact

• Speaking and listening in formal and informal contexts

• Composing meaningful texts for real purposes and audiences

• Expressing and supporting an opinion with evidence

• Acknowledgements and citations — avoiding plagiarism, respecting IP rights