English Language Arts, Secondary 1

A text's social function is the job it does among people: a recipe instructs, an obituary honours a life, a flyer recruits, a news report informs. Name the job before you read closely.

Every text has a writer or producer with values, a background and a purpose: a soft-drink company's website and a dentists' association pamphlet can use the same facts about sugar and send opposite messages.

The context of production is who made the text, when, where and for whom: a notice from the principal and a message from a friend about the same school dance are read differently.

The writer's time, place and culture shape the text: a story written in the 1950s may show families and jobs the way that time saw them, and noticing it is part of reading.

Your own reading context counts too: why you are reading (to follow steps, for a test, for pleasure), where you are reading, and what you already know about the topic.

Selecting a text means deciding what kind of text to make before you start: its mode (spoken, written or media), its genre (a story, a report, an advertisement) and its form (a poster, a podcast episode, a letter).

Songs, photographs, video clips and other people's words belong to someone: before you publish, check whether you have permission or whether the material's licence lets you use it, and credit the creator.

Evaluating a draft means reading it the way your reader will: wherever they would ask 'what do you mean?' or 'so what?', the draft needs work.

Purpose decides first: to persuade classmates to recycle, a 30-second video ad may work better than an essay; to explain a science experiment, a lab report or an illustrated how-to fits better.

Privacy is part of production: ask before you film, photograph or record a person, and never publish someone's personal information.

A primary source is first-hand evidence from the time or the person: an artefact, an interview, an autobiography, a diary, a photograph. A secondary source reports on or explains primary ones: an encyclopedia entry, a newspaper article, a textbook.

Both kinds can be print or non-print: a recorded interview is a primary non-print source; a documentary that explains past events is a secondary non-print source.

A broad topic must be narrowed into a question you can answer: 'water' becomes 'Is the water in our town's creek safe for swimming?', often by listing sub-questions or pros and cons.

Research needs a system and a method: a notebook or file where each fact sits beside its source, so you can cite it later, and a way of finding answers that fits the question, such as counting answers in a survey or exploring experiences in interviews.

A planning text maps a project before it is made: an outline orders the ideas of a report or an essay, and a storyboard sketches each shot of a video with notes on the words and sounds.

An action plan lists the steps, who does each one, the materials and the deadlines; a proposal explains what you want to do, why, and how, so that someone can approve it.

Reading a model planning text shows you its parts: headings and sub-points in an outline, numbered frames in a storyboard, a timeline in an action plan.

A plan is a working document: you change it as you learn more, which is far easier than changing a finished video or essay.

Denotation is a word's dictionary meaning; connotation is the feeling or idea it carries: 'home' and 'house' denote the same building, but 'home' connotes warmth and belonging.

Point of view is who tells the story: a first-person narrator says 'I' and knows only their own thoughts; a third-person limited narrator follows one character; an omniscient narrator knows what every character thinks.

Tone is the writer's attitude (playful, bitter, admiring); mood is the feeling the reader gets (tense, peaceful, eerie). A calm, matter-of-fact tone can make a frightening scene feel even creepier.

Irony is a gap between what we expect and what happens (situational) or between what a character knows and what the audience knows (dramatic); satire uses irony and exaggeration to mock a target; a symbol or motif is an object or image that returns to carry a bigger meaning.

An explanation works only if its audience understands it, so an explainer plans for what the audience already knows and what they do not.

Moving from an expert to a non-expert register means replacing jargon with plain words or defining it: 'photosynthesis' becomes 'the way a plant makes its food from sunlight, water and air'.

Analogies and references to the audience's own experience build a bridge: 'a cell membrane works like a school's front door, letting some people in and keeping others out'.

Demonstrating the steps, and checking for understanding with a question or a quick try, show the explainer whether the explanation landed.

An interview lets a real person's voice carry a report: the interviewer prepares open questions, asks follow-ups, records the answers and transcribes them faithfully, in print, on radio or on video.

A breaking news story uses the inverted pyramid: the answers to who, what, when, where and why come first, and the details follow from most to least important, so the story can be cut from the bottom.

News feels immediate through the active voice, short simple sentences, eyewitness quotations and a photo with a caption; television adds conventions such as an on-site reporter and a hand-held camera.

A report supports its details with evidence (field notes, interviews, facts, statistics), explains with examples, definitions and paraphrase, respects limits such as a word count, and ends with a conclusion that pulls the key findings together.

Humour persuades: a pun or a parody makes readers laugh at a target, sarcasm says the opposite of what it means in order to mock, and bathos drops from grand to silly. The joke carries the argument.

Persuasive language steers the reader: loaded words ('reckless' or 'bold'), modals ('you must act now'), figures of speech such as hyperbole and euphemism ('passed away'), and figurative language such as metaphor.

Advertisements appeal to basic needs (fitting in, luxury and style, doing good) and to emotions (testimonials, sad music), and use media conventions such as camera angles, colour, a jingle or a voiceover.

A review persuades too: it names the work and its creator, gives an overview, critiques the creator's choices, compares the work with others of its genre, and ends with a recommendation, in an informal but expert first-person voice.

A visual aid supports what you say: a photograph, a handout or a slide shows what words cannot (a map, a chart, a face) and is never a script to read aloud.

Speakers adapt their register and voice to the situation: formal words for a presentation to the student council, expressive intonation in a poetry reading, and a casual link to the last speaker in a class discussion ('Building on what Maya said...').

Body language persuades and clarifies: eye contact, posture, gestures for emphasis and well-placed pauses.

Talk is also a way to learn and to create effect: in a group you build ideas by asking questions and by paraphrasing what someone said to check you understood, and spoken genres use rhythm, repetition, pacing, rhyme and alliteration to add meaning.

Each part of speech does a job in a sentence: nouns name, verbs show an action or a state, adjectives describe nouns, and adverbs describe verbs, adjectives or other adverbs, often telling how, when or where.

Pronouns stand in for nouns and take the right form for their job: 'I' and 'she' as subjects ('Sam and I left early'), 'me' and 'her' as objects ('The coach drove Sam and me home').

Prepositions link a noun to the rest of the sentence (under the table, after lunch), conjunctions join words and clauses (and, but, because, although), and interjections show sudden feeling (Wow! Oops!).

Using them correctly means choosing the right form in context: 'She runs quickly' (an adverb tells how she runs), not 'She runs quick'; 'We played well', not 'We played good'.

Sentences do different jobs: a declarative sentence states (The bus is late.), an interrogative asks (Is the bus late?), an imperative commands or requests (Wait for the bus.), and an exclamatory shows strong feeling (The bus is finally here!).

The same event becomes different stories: two radio stations may lead with different facts and voices, and the same baseball game feels different on radio, where words and crowd noise paint the play, and on television, with replays and close-ups.

Media codes position an audience and show the producer's stance: a public service announcement's sad music and close-ups move viewers to donate, and a documentary's choice of images reveals its point of view.

Sound and image codes create effects: fast music builds urgency, canned laughter tells you a moment is funny, dark lighting makes an atmosphere threatening, and a camera looking up at a person makes them seem powerful.

A sign stands for one thing (the hazardous-materials sign), while a symbol suggests more than it shows (the Canadian flag); codes can also carry bias, stereotypes and values, as when an ad shows only one kind of family.