The Ontario Curriculum, Grade 9: English, 2023 identifies the expectations for the course and describes the skills and knowledge that students are expected to acquire, demonstrate, and apply in their class work and investigations, and in various other activities on which their achievement is assessed and evaluated.

Mandatory learning is described in the overall and specific expectations of the curriculum.

Two sets of expectations – overall expectations and specific expectations – are listed for each strand, or broad area of the curriculum in Grade 9 English. The strands include  Strand A: Literacy Connections and Applications, and three other strands, lettered B, C, and D. Strand B has an associated learning continuum that describes the progression of mandatory learning associated with Overall Expectation B3 from Grades 1 to 9. Taken together, the overall and specific expectations represent the mandated curriculum.

The overall expectations describe in general terms the knowledge and skills that students are expected to demonstrate by the end of each grade. The specific expectations describe the expected knowledge and skills in greater detail. The specific expectations are organized under numbered subheadings, each of which indicates the strand and the overall expectation to which the group of specific expectations corresponds (e.g., “B2” indicates that the group relates to overall expectation 2 in Strand B). This organization is not meant to imply that the expectations in any one group are achieved independently of the expectations in the other groups, nor is it intended to imply that learning associated with the expectations happens in a linear, sequential way. The numbered headings are used merely as an organizational structure to help teachers focus on particular aspects of knowledge, concepts, and skills as they develop various lessons and learning activities for students.

In the Grade 9 English course, the overall expectations outline standard sets of knowledge and skills required for understanding and using the building blocks of language, understanding and responding to texts, expressing ideas and creating texts, and making language and literacy connections in a diverse range of contexts. The curriculum focuses on connecting, developing, reinforcing, and refining the knowledge and skills that students acquire as they work towards meeting the overall expectations in the course. This approach reflects and accommodates the progressive nature of development of knowledge and skills in language and literacy learning. In the course, the three overall expectations in each strand are developed in related sets of specific expectations.

The specific expectations reflect the progression in knowledge and skill development through the introduction of new expectations, where appropriate. The progression is captured by the increased complexity of the teacher supports (see below) associated with most expectations and by the increased specificity of language and literacy knowledge and skills, the diversity of contexts in which the learning is applied, and the variety of opportunities presented for applying it.