Participate in small- and large-group discussion, observing the courtesies of group discussion, and demonstrate effective group interaction skills and strategies including:

• assume some of the work necessary to maintain discussion and advance it (e.g., by summarizing, raising questions, seeking clarification, extracting significant points, making connections, setting agenda).
• maintain and demonstrate respectful behaviours
• stick to topic and keep goals in mind
• listen carefully
• co-operate by staying positive, waiting turn, and avoiding put-downs
• disagree respectfully
• encourage others by trying to understand their ideas and asking for opinions
• clarify and restate speaker's ideas to confirm meaning.

Select, use, and evaluate purposefully a variety of before (page 28), during (page 29), and after (page 30) strategies to construct and communicate meaning when speaking.

Understand and apply language cues and conventions to construct and communicate meaning when speaking including:

• Pragmatic cues and conventions: selecting and using language that includes people across cultures, races, genders, ages, and abilities and avoids common usage problems including imprecision and the use of jargon, slang, euphemism, clichés, gobbledygook, and "abusages" (such as "Me and John...", "I can't get no...,""Like,...").
• Textual cues and conventions: creating oral texts that are unified (i.e., all elements combined to form a single whole or "oneness") and coherent (i.e., consistent, logically arranged, and connected).
• Syntactic cues and conventions: using sentences that are varied in form (e.g., parallelism, inversion, subordination); are free of misplaced qualifiers and dangling qualifiers; show agreement of subject and verb, consistency in verb tense, pronoun agreement, and clear pronoun reference; and use correctly that/which, who/whom, and punctuation.
• Semantic/lexical/morphological cues and conventions: using words correctly including prepositions (e.g., suited to, suited for), homonyms (e.g., to, too, two), plurals and possessives (e.g., the cat's paws, students' projects, people's pets), and meaning (e.g., then/than; few, fewer/less, lesser).
• Graphophonic cues and conventions: recognizing and using Canadian spelling conventions and clear pronunciation to aid spelling (e.g., accept, except).
• Other cues and conventions: using appropriate oral elements (e.g., volume, intonation); using appropriate non-verbal cues and body language; using appropriate gestures, facial expressions, sound, and visual and multimedia aids to enhance message.

Use oral language to interact purposefully, confidently, and appropriately in a variety of situations including participating in one-to-one, small-group, and large-group discussions (demonstrating an awareness of the relationship of language to group and community membership, acknowledging and paraphrasing views that differ from own, reassessing own viewpoints, prompting and supporting others, solving problems, resolving conflicts, building consensus, articulating and explaining personal viewpoint, discussing preferences, speaking to extend current understanding, and celebrating special events and accomplishments).

Work in pairs to develop and script an interview on an issue of interest or on an incident in a literary text, for a particular audience and purpose.

In role, rehearse and record interview or present interview to the group.

Work in pairs to prepare and present closing argument for and against a selected fictional character on a charge which could have been levelled at a character.

Select three poems related to theme and present them to a group of peers using voice to clarify meaning by emphasizing rhythm, highlighting particular words or phrases, and signalling the role and effects of line endings, stanza breaks, and other elements of structure.

Recognize and use elements of classical speech forms (including introduction, body with transitions, conclusion) in formulating rational arguments and apply the art of persuasion.

Recognize and adjust oral presentation elements (i.e., articulation, pronunciation, volume, tempo, pitch, stress, gestures, eye contact, facial expression, and poise) in keeping with purpose, audience needs, and situation.