Page 4 - The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10: English, 2007 (Revised)

This document replaces The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 and 10: English, 1999. Beginning in September 2007, all English courses for Grades 9 and 10 will be based on the expectations outlined in this document.
SECONDARY SCHOOLS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The goal of Ontario secondary schools is to support high-quality learning while giving individual students the opportunity to choose programs that suit their skills and interests. The updated Ontario curriculum, in combination with a broader range of learning options outside traditional classroom instruction, will enable students to better customize their high school education and improve their prospects for success in school and in life.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LITERACY, LANGUAGE, AND THE ENGLISH CURRICULUM
Literacy is about more than reading or writing – it is about how we communicate in society. It is about social practices and relationships, about knowledge, language and culture.
Those who use literacy take it for granted – but those who cannot use it are excluded from much communication in today’s world. Indeed, it is the excluded who can best appreciate the notion of“literacy as freedom”.
UNESCO, Statement for the United Nations Literacy Decade, 2003–2012
Literacy development is a communal project, and the teaching of literacy skills is embedded across the Ontario curriculum. However, it is the English curriculum that is dedicated to developing the knowledge and skills on which literacy is based – that is, knowledge and skills in the areas of listening and speaking, reading, writing, and viewing and representing.
Language development is central to students’ intellectual, social, cultural, and emotional growth and must be seen as a key component of the curriculum. When students learn to use language, they do more than master the basic skills. They learn to value the power
of language and to use it responsibly. They learn to express feelings and opinions and to support their opinions with sound arguments and evidence from research. They become aware of the many purposes for which language is used and the diverse forms it can take to serve particular purposes and audiences. They learn to use the formal language appro- priate for debates and essays, the narrative language of stories and novels, the figurative language of poetry, the technical language of instructions and manuals. They develop
an awareness of how language is used in different formal and informal situations. They come to understand that language is an important medium for communicating ideas and
INTRODUCTION