Overview of the Program
English language learners in any grade may be placed in appropriate ESL or ELD courses. Since many ESL and ELD classes include students aged between fourteen and twenty, the topics and activities must be selected to appeal to a wide range of ages and maturity levels. There are five ESL courses and five ELD courses. The courses are designated according to levels of proficiency in English and literacy development, not by grade. All ESL and ELD courses are open courses.
Students may substitute up to three ESL or ELD courses for compulsory English credit requirements. The remaining English credit shall be chosen from one of the compulsory English courses offered in Grade 12. Additional ESL or ELD credits may be counted as optional credits for diploma purposes.
Curriculum Expectations
The expectations identified for each course describe the knowledge and skills that students are expected to develop and demonstrate in their class work, on tests, and in various
other activities on which their achievement is assessed and evaluated.
Strands
The content in each of the ESL and ELD courses is organized into four interrelated strands,
or broad areas of learning: Listening and Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Socio-cultural
Competence and Media Literacy. Effective instructional activities blend expectations from the four strands in order to provide English language learners with the kinds of experiences that promote meaningful learning and that help students recognize how language and literacy skills in the four strands overlap and strengthen one another. The program at all levels is designed to develop a range of essential skills in the four interrelated strands, built on a solid foundation of knowledge of the language conventions of standard English and incorporating the use of analytical, critical, and metacognitive thinking skills. Students learn best when they are provided with opportunities to monitor and reflect on their learning, and each strand includes expectations that call for such reflection.
Listening and Speaking
The Listening and Speaking strand has three overall expectations, as follows:
Students will:
demonstrate the ability to understand, interpret, and evaluate spoken English
for a variety of purposes;
use speaking skills and strategies to communicate in English for a variety of
classroom and social purposes;
use correctly the language structures appropriate for this level to communicate
orally in English.
Reading
The Reading strand has three overall expectations, as follows:
Students will:
read and demonstrate understanding of a variety of texts for different purposes;
use a variety of reading strategies throughout the reading process to extract
meaning from texts;
use a variety of strategies to build vocabulary;
locate and extract relevant information from written and graphic texts for a
variety of purposes.
Writing
The Writing strand has four overall expectations, as follows:
Students will:
- write in a variety of forms for different purposes and audiences;
- organize ideas coherently in writing;
- use correctly the conventions of written English appropriate for this level, including
grammar, usage, spelling, and punctuation;
- use the stages of the writing process.
Socio-cultural Competence and Media Literacy
The Socio-cultural Competence and Media Literacy strand has four overall expectations, as follows:
Students will:
use English and non-verbal communication strategies appropriately in a variety
of social contexts;
demonstrate an understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Canadian
citizenship, and of the contributions of diverse groups to Canadian society;
demonstrate knowledge of and adaptation to the Ontario education system;
demonstrate an understanding of, interpret, and create a variety of media works.