English

This unit covers the Oral Communication strand of English, Grade 11, University Preparation (ENG3U), from The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: English (2007, revised). It teaches every specific expectation in the strand's three parts:

• 1. Listening to Understand (1.1 to 1.9): setting goals for lectures, feedback conferences, dramatic readings and testimony; active listening in seminars and book clubs; strategies for complex texts, including predicting from structure and replaying to prepare commentary; identifying central claims and the evidence that substantiates them; interpreting and comparing seminars, documentary interviews and performances; comparing values in speeches and connecting public forums to experience; analysing how statistics, expert opinion, figurative language and Shakespeare's language influence listeners; critical literacy (point of view, omission and whose interests are served); and evaluating presentation strategies.
• 2. Speaking to Communicate (2.1 to 2.7): introducing and thanking guest speakers, parody, leading seminars and moderating panels; leading discussions, reading audience cues and respecting time limits; selecting research, ordering arguments and rehearsing transitions; metaphor, analogy, rhetorical questions and register; pauses, emphasis, enunciation, culturally aware non-verbal cues and impartiality; and audio-visual aids that support rather than distract.
• 3. Reflecting on Oral Communication Skills and Strategies (3.1 and 3.2): evidence-based metacognition, long-term plans for the oral skills a future program or career needs, and how viewing, representing, reading and writing strengthen oral communication.

Each lesson starts from what was taught in Grade 10 English (ENG2D), teaches the Grade 11 skill with worked examples, diagrams and a hands-on activity, and ends with practice at three levels and a quiz. Examples draw on texts often studied in Grade 11, such as Shakespeare's Macbeth and Hamlet, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and the poetry of John Keats, along with famous speeches and everyday Canadian situations. The skills connect directly to the Reading, Writing and Media Studies units of this course and prepare students for Grade 12 English (ENG4U).

This unit covers the Reading and Literature Studies strand of ENG3U (English, Grade 11, University Preparation) as it applies to literary texts: specific expectations 1.1 to 1.8 (reading for meaning) and 2.1 to 2.3 (form and style), with 3.2 and 3.3 (decoding and vocabulary) practised on Shakespeare's language. Its sibling unit, Reading Informational and Graphic Texts, applies the same strand to essays, articles, reports and graphic texts and covers reading fluency (3.1 to 3.3) and reflecting on reading (4.1 and 4.2) in full.

ENG3U asks you to analyse challenging literary texts from different periods, countries and cultures. You will read:

• Short fiction: Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour (U.S., 1894), Guy de Maupassant's The Necklace (France, 1884), and Canadian stories by Stephen Leacock (1910) and the Mohawk writer E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake (1893).
• Poetry: Shelley, Donne, Browning, Whitman and Keats (England and the U.S.), Bashō (Japan), Tagore (India), Langston Hughes (the Harlem Renaissance), and E. Pauline Johnson, read beside Duncan Campbell Scott in a lesson on critical literacy and representation.
• A novel study: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), with a method you can use for any novel.
• Shakespeare: a complete study of Hamlet in four lessons.

All of these texts are in the public domain in Canada, so you can read them free online. Contemporary works, including books by First Nations, Métis and Inuit writers, are described and recommended rather than quoted.

By the end you will be able to make subtle inferences, analyse how form and style build themes, evaluate texts and film adaptations with criteria, and question whose perspectives a text includes or leaves out. These skills lead directly to Grade 12 English (ENG4U).

This unit covers the Reading and Literature Studies strand of ENG3U (English, Grade 11, University Preparation) as it applies to informational and graphic texts: essays, articles, editorials, reports, speeches, memoirs and biographies, infographics and data graphics, editorial cartoons, comics and graphic novels. Together with its sibling unit, Reading Literary Texts (novels, short stories, poetry and drama), it addresses every specific expectation from 1.1 to 4.2.

• Reading for Meaning (1): choosing varied texts from different cultures and periods and the right strategies (1.1, 1.2); mapping theses, claims, evidence and the ideas in graphics (1.3); subtle inferences from contents, organization and design (1.4); connecting and synthesizing several texts on a current issue (1.5); analysing essays with the rhetorical situation and the Toulmin model (1.6); evaluating texts and fact-checking an online biography (1.7); and analysing perspective and bias in editorials and local histories (1.8).
• Understanding Form and Style (2): informational forms from news reports to formal reports and speeches, satire and parody, and graphic novels (2.1); text features such as decks, captions, footnotes, chart axes and comic lettering (2.2); and diction, voice, sentence structure and rhetorical devices (2.3).
• Reading With Fluency (3): familiar words in figurative, slang and subject-specific uses, glossaries and etymological dictionaries, and precise synonyms (3.1 to 3.3).
• Reflecting on Skills and Strategies (4): strategy logs, targets and how other language skills and technology strengthen reading (4.1, 4.2).

Texts include Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal (1729) alongside articles, essays, editorials, infographics and comic pages written for this site. These skills lead directly to Grade 12 English (ENG4U), where you will analyse more complex non-fiction and write independent research essays.

This unit teaches the essay-writing half of the Writing strand of Grade 11 University English (ENG3U): the literary analysis essay and the argumentative essay, the two forms you will write most often in Grade 11 and 12 English and in university.

Plan: decode essay tasks (task verbs such as analyze, evaluate and to what extent, the academic audience, implicit requirements), generate and focus ideas into a working thesis with a tension, and organize your content into a claim spine using the pattern that best fits your purpose, checking that it is accurate, complete, interesting and on-task before you draft.

Literary analysis: close reading and annotation of John McCrae's In Flanders Fields (1915; public domain); complex theses; layered body paragraphs with correctly formatted poetry quotations; a comparative essay with Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est; they say / I say introductions, alternative interpretations, conclusions that explain significance, and timed in-class essays.

Argument: claims of fact, value and policy; the Toulmin model (claim, grounds, warrant, backing, qualifier, rebuttal); credible evidence (and never invented evidence); steel-man counterarguments; ethos, pathos, logos and kairos; fallacies; and adjusting voice and structure (including Rogerian argument) for different audiences.

Craft and revise: a formal but distinctive academic voice, calibrated certainty and precise diction; sentence craft for emphasis, rhythm and cohesion; critical literacy about how your own beliefs, values and experiences shape your writing; and revising drafts to criteria so they become more complex, not just more correct.

Remember from Grade 10: in the Grade 10 English (ENG2D) Writing unit you wrote a literary essay with a what, how, why thesis, an OSSLT-style opinion essay, and you practised voice, sentence variety, critical literacy and revision. Grade 11 builds on all of it with more open prompts, more complex theses, comparison, formal argument and deeper revision. Model paragraphs and invented examples were written for this site and should not be copied into assignments.

Curriculum expectations covered: Writing 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.5 and 2.1 to 2.7 (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: English, 2007 (revised), English, Grade 11, University Preparation (ENG3U), Writing strand). Research (1.3), other forms, conventions (3.1 to 3.7) and reflection (4.1 to 4.3) are taught in the sibling unit Writing: Research, Forms and Conventions.

This unit teaches the parts of the Grade 11 University English (ENG3U) Writing strand that sit around the essay: research, writing in forms other than the essay, the conventions of polished English, publishing, and reflecting on yourself as a writer. Its partner unit, Writing: Essays and Literary Analysis, teaches planning, organizing, drafting and revising essays, voice, diction and sentence craft.

Research (Lessons 1 to 4): write and track a research plan, ask strong research questions, search with nested Boolean strings and database tools, evaluate sources for reliability, objectivity and completeness (including lateral reading and AI-generated content), take notes that make plagiarism unlikely, write an annotated bibliography, and handle harder MLA cases: block quotations, altered quotations, indirect sources, anthologies, films, interviews and teachings shared by Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers.

Forms (Lessons 5 to 8): write a research report and a comparative report with headings and graphics; reviews, critiques and opinion columns; personal and reflective forms such as the personal essay, the letter to the editor and the speech; and creative forms such as short fiction, narrative poems, scripts, monologues and adaptations.

Conventions (Lessons 9 to 13): Canadian spelling and spelling strategies, vocabulary building and etymology; punctuation for clarity and effect; grammar for complex sentences (coordination, subordination, parallelism) and for precise meaning (pronoun case, reported speech, active and passive voice); proofreading, presentation features and producing finished work.

Reflecting (Lesson 14): metacognition, interconnected skills and a Grade 11 writing portfolio.

Remember from Grade 10: the Grade 10 English (ENG2D) Writing unit taught the CRAAP test, basic MLA citation, news reports, reviews, business letters, short fiction, agreement and modifiers, comma rules, apostrophes, proofreading in passes and a first portfolio. This unit builds on those skills rather than repeating them. People, schools, sources and texts in examples are invented for practice unless stated.

Curriculum expectations covered: Writing 1.3, 2.1, 3.1 to 3.7 and 4.1 to 4.3 (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: English, 2007 (revised), English, Grade 11, University Preparation (ENG3U), Writing strand). Expectation 2.1 is shared with the essays unit, which teaches the essay forms.

In this unit you will read, question and create increasingly complex media texts, the kind that mix purposes, speak to several audiences at once, borrow from other texts and hide who paid for them.

Understanding media texts: you will explain how complex texts are designed for layered purposes and audiences; interpret overt and implied messages with semiotics (signifier and signified, denotation, connotation, myth); analyze satire, parody and irony; evaluate effectiveness with criteria and qualified judgments; check credibility and recognize misinformation and synthetic media; explain why audiences respond differently (uses and gratifications, interpretive communities, context, fandom and algorithms); analyze representation, identity and power, including Indigenous self-representation in Canada; and follow the money through ownership, financing, distribution, marketing and regulation, including the Online Streaming Act and Online News Act.

Forms, conventions and techniques: you will study how forms shape content in a converged world (remediation, platform affordances, transmedia), how composition, lighting, colour, editing rhythm and sound design create meaning, and how documentaries and data visuals claim to show the truth.

Creating and reflecting: you will write a production proposal with audience research and a weighted decision matrix, plan conventions and techniques with a segment plan and script, produce responsibly (consent, ethical editing, copyright and Creative Commons, accessibility), test and revise, and reflect with evidence. The running example is an invented four-minute audio documentary, The Last Rink on Elm Street.

It builds on Grade 10 (ENG2D) Media Studies, where you learned the key concepts, the media triangle, persuasive techniques, news framing, film language and a planning cycle. All ads, shows, creators, products and data in the examples are invented unless named as real.

Curriculum expectations covered: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 4.1, 4.2 (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 11 and 12: English, 2007, English, Grade 11, University Preparation (ENG3U), Media Studies strand).