89 core topics + 121 prerequisite topics taught as needed · approximately 67 hours of instruction including spaced review
An adaptive diagnostic (up to 40 questions) places the student on the course's knowledge graph - topics already known are credited, and instruction begins exactly at the learning frontier. Every topic is taught with a worked-example lesson and auto-graded practice; a topic is mastered at 75%+ and then maintained through spaced reviews on an expanding schedule. Mixed checks follow every 6 lessons; each unit ends with a 12-item quiz, and course-wide assessments appear at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% mastery. Prerequisite gaps below the course are detected and taught rather than skipped, so completion certifies the whole tower, not just the top.
| Say It Straight First [H] | Restate a difficult passage accurately before you interpret it. |
| The Weight of One Word [H] | Ask why the writer chose this word and not the nearest alternative. |
| What the Sentence Shape Does [H] | Read the structure of a sentence as part of what it means. |
| The Image That Carries It [H] | Read a concrete detail or comparison for the abstract work it is doing. |
| Where the Tone Turns [H] | Name a text's attitude toward its subject, and find where it changes. |
| What the Text Will Not Say [H] | Draw a conclusion the words on the page require but never state. |
| The Line That Actually Proves It [H] | Choose the quotation that supports your claim, not the one nearest it. |
| Reading With a Pencil [H] | Mark a text so the second pass starts where the first one ended. |
| Where the Reading Stops [H] | Tell a reading the text supports from one you have supplied yourself. |
| What a Character Does Instead of Saying [H] | Read a character from conduct, from how other people behave around them, and from what nobody says out loud. |
| The Reason a Character Will Not Give [H] | Work out what a character actually wants when the reason they offer is not the reason they have. |
| The Distance Between the Telling and the Told [H] | Measure the distance between what a narrator claims and what the same text shows. |
| The Object That Does the Work [H] | Read the object, gesture or image that carries what the sentence refuses to state. |
| Voice as Evidence [H] | Use word choice, sentence shape and sentence length as evidence about the person speaking. |
| Set Against Each Other [H] | Use one character to see another, without letting the contrast turn into a verdict. |
| Characters Who Do Not Add Up [H] | Hold two true and incompatible things about one character at the same time instead of choosing between them. |
| What Changes, and What It Costs [H] | Locate the turn in a character, and say what the change leaves untouched and what it costs. |
| Stating a Theme as a Claim [H] | Write a theme as a sentence somebody could argue with, not a noun. |
| The Evidence a Theme Rests On [H] | Support a claim about theme with the detail that would break it if removed. |
| Motif: What Keeps Coming Back [H] | Track a repeating image or word, then say what changes between its first appearance and its last. |
| When an Object Starts Carrying the Meaning [H] | Read a symbol by the gap between what an object does and what the text keeps it for. |
| The Central Argument of a Nonfiction Text [H] | Name the one thing a writer wants conceded, as distinct from the subject. |
| Concession, Rebuttal, and What They Cost [H] | Tell a granted point from a denied one, and say what the writer bought with it. |
| Two Readings, One Text [H] | Say what a text settles, what it declines to settle, and which reading the evidence rules out. |
| How a Theme Gets Built [H] | Follow an idea from its first appearance through the place it is complicated to its last. |
| The Shape of the Whole [H] | Name how a narrative is arranged, separately from what happens in it. |
| Story Time and Telling Time [H] | Separate the order events happened in from the order the text reveals them. |
| Where the Story Turns [H] | Find the hinge - the point after which the same events mean something else. |
| Scene, Summary, and the Skipped Year [H] | Read the ratio between page time and story time as a statement of emphasis. |
| What the Structure Withholds [H] | Treat a missing piece as a shaped choice rather than an accident. |
| The Story Inside the Story [H] | Read the outer situation that contains a telling, not only the telling. |
| Strands Set Against Each Other [H] | Read the seam between two strands, where the writer has left the connection out. |
| How an Ending Works [H] | Judge an ending by what it does to the text behind it, not by what it settles. |
| Reading the Period Off the Page [H] | Name the period habits a text is using from the writing itself, without being told the label. |
| Evidence for a Claim About a Text [H] | Test a claim about a text against the detail that would actually settle it. |
| Form Carries the History [H] | Explain what a technical choice about narration asserts about what can be known. |
| The Moment That Made the Text [H] | Connect what a text worries about to the conditions it was written in - and say how far the connection reaches. |
| Movements Answer Other Movements [H] | Identify what a text is refusing, and read the refusal as part of its argument. |
| One Subject, Two Periods [H] | Compare two treatments of the same material and locate exactly where the periods part. |
| Reading a Text Forward, Not Backward [H] | Keep a later fact, a later word, or a later verdict from being smuggled into a reading. |
| Who Gets Counted In [H] | Ask how a movement's roster was assembled, and what a roster can and cannot measure. |
| Verbal Irony: Words Against Meaning [H] | Detect a speaker who means something other than what the words say, and name what the gap is doing. |
| Situational Irony: Aim Against Outcome [H] | Tell an ironic outcome from a merely unfortunate one by testing it against the aim that produced it. |
| Dramatic Irony: What the Audience Carries [H] | Track what a reader knows that a character does not, and say what the gap does to the lines that follow. |
| The Gap Between a Speaker and the Text [H] | Measure the distance between what a speaker claims about himself and what the text puts on the page - including when the distance is zero. |
| Satire: Finding the Target [H] | Separate what a satire pretends to be from what it wants you to think worse of. |
| How Satire Works on a Reader [H] | Name the technique a satire is using and say what it buys that a plain complaint could not. |
| Is It Irony at All? [H] | Decide whether a text is ironic by naming the gap, rather than by how the text makes you feel. |
| Ambiguity: What a Text Refuses to Settle [H] | Say what a text settles, what it deliberately leaves open, and which readings its evidence rules out. |
| Same Fact, Different Verdict [H] | Choose the word that carries the verdict you want without changing the claim you are making. |
| How Strong Is Too Strong [H] | Pick the rung of a word ladder the evidence actually supports. |
| Where the Judgment Is Hiding [H] | Find the word that is arguing inside a sentence of facts, and take it out without losing anything. |
| Softening It and Sharpening It [H] | Tell a euphemism from a plain statement, and a strong true sentence from one that overclaims. |
| The Level of the Diction [H] | Match the level of your words to the occasion, and tell inflated diction from necessary technical language. |
| Naming a Tone Precisely [H] | Name a writer's attitude with the word the evidence supports, not the nearest feeling. |
| Where the Tone Turns [H] | Locate the sentence where a writer's attitude changes, with or without a signal word. |
| What the Word Choices Add Up To [H] | Read a writer's position out of an accumulation of choices he never states as an opinion. |
| Which Clause the Reader Believes [H] | Put the fact you are asserting in the main clause and the fact you are conceding in the subordinate one. |
| Items That Have to Match [H] | Keep every item in a series - and every half of a not only / but also pair - in the same grammatical form. |
| The Phrase That Grabs the Wrong Subject [H] | Check what an opening phrase actually attaches to, and repair it without changing who did what. |
| What a Limiting Word Limits [H] | Place only, just and even where they belong, and pin a modifier that could belong to either side of it. |
| Adding Detail Without Adding a Sentence [H] | Name and build the four free modifiers: appositive, participial phrase, relative clause and absolute phrase. |
| Semicolon, Colon, Dash [H] | Choose the mark the joint between two clauses actually calls for, and keep a comma-heavy list readable. |
| Active, Passive, and the Missing Actor [H] | Identify the passive, name what it leaves out, and tell when leaving the actor out is the honest choice. |
| Where the Main Clause Falls [H] | Tell a periodic sentence from a cumulative one, and rebuild either into the other without changing what it reports. |
| The Speaker a Text Invents [H] | Tell the writer apart from the speaker the writing constructs, and say what that speaker is built to buy. |
| How the Case Is Built [H] | Follow the moves an argument makes - premise, concession, reframe - without deciding who was right. |
| Testimony and the Problem of Proof [H] | Work out what a text does to make itself believable, and what that requirement cost the person telling it. |
| Whose Words Are on the Page [H] | Track the hands a text passed through on its way to you, and say what each of them decided. |
| What the Narrator Will Not Say [H] | Read a narrator's evasions, denials and repetitions as evidence about what is actually going on. |
| The Object That Carries the Meaning [H] | State what a recurring object claims, and where the claim stops holding. |
| Tone, and Where a Text Turns [H] | Name a writer's attitude precisely, and locate the sentence where it changes. |
| Building a Defensible Reading [H] | Separate a claim the text will bear from a plot summary on one side and an invention on the other. |
| Realism and the Weight of the Ordinary [H] | Read a realist text by asking what its ordinary, checkable details are made to carry. |
| Naturalism: Force, Chance, and an Indifferent World [H] | Tell a story where the situation does the deciding from one where a person does. |
| Voice, Dialect, and Who Is Holding the Pen [H] | Work out whose language is on the page and what a way of speaking is being made to do. |
| What the Modernists Left Out [H] | Read a deliberate silence - what a text could have explained and refuses to. |
| The Image That Does the Arguing [H] | Read a concrete image as a claim, and notice what a stated moral costs a poem. |
| Writing to Two Rooms at Once [H] | Read a text written for two audiences that want different things from the same page. |
| The Narrator Who Will Not Editorialize [H] | Read tone in a text that reports and refuses to judge. |
| Claims About Periods, and the Evidence for Them [H] | Test a claim that a text belongs to a movement against what the text actually does. |
| The Word the Text Will Not Explain [H] | Read an unglossed word or reference for what the refusal to explain it says about who the text is written for. |
| Two Claims on One Person [H] | Read a character who belongs to two places without collapsing the position into confusion or injury. |
| The Older Voice and the Younger Story [H] | Read the distance between the person who lived an event and the person now telling it. |
| Why It Is Told in That Order [H] | Read the arrangement of a fragmented or nonlinear text as an argument the text is making. |
| Carrying a Story You Did Not Live [H] | Read secondhand memory by following the chain of custody and locating where the record stops. |
| Who the Text Is Talking To [H] | Identify who a text addresses, and read a second-person pronoun for the specific person it is really carrying. |
| The One Rule the Story Changed [H] | Read a realistic text with one impossible element by watching the register that reports it. |
| Testing a Label Against the Text [H] | Treat a claim about what kind of book something is as a prediction, and test it against what the text actually does. |
| Hearing Rhymes | Tell when two words end with the same sound. |
| Hearing the First Sound | Tell which sound a word starts with. |
| Words That Begin Alike | Group words by their beginning sound. |
| Capital and Lowercase Letters | Match every capital letter to its lowercase partner. |
| Recognizing High-Frequency Words | Know the most common words on sight, instantly. |
| High-Frequency Words in Sentences | Use common words correctly inside a real sentence. |
| How Books and Print Work | Know the parts of a book and which way print goes. |
| Listening Comprehension | Understand a story that is read out loud to you. |
| What Happened First, Next, Last | Put the events of a story in the order they happened. |
| What Makes a Sentence | Tell a complete sentence from a group of words. |
| Naming Part and Telling Part | Split a sentence into who it is about and what happens. |
| Capital Letters and End Marks | Start every sentence with a capital and end it with a mark. |
| Choosing the Right End Mark | Use a period, question mark, or exclamation point. |
| When the Sentence Just Tells You | Find a word's meaning written into the sentence itself. |
| A Nearby Word That Means the Same | Use a synonym elsewhere in the passage to unlock a word. |
| When a Contrast Points the Other Way | Use a contrast word to work out the opposite meaning. |
| Working Back From Examples | Use a list of examples to work out the category. |
| When There Is No Clue Word | Work out a meaning from the whole situation. |
| Naming the Clue | Say which kind of context clue a sentence is using. |
| Putting Your Guess Back In | Check a guessed meaning by reading the sentence again with it. |
| Words With More Than One Meaning | Choose the meaning a sentence needs, not the one you thought of first. |
| When the Clue Is Somewhere Else | Find the meaning of a word when the clue sits in a different sentence. |
| Shades of Meaning | Choose the word whose size matches what actually happened. |
| Words That Carry a Feeling | Hear the approval or disapproval hidden inside a word choice. |
| Noticing When Words Are Not Literal | Tell when a sentence is not meant exactly as written. |
| Working Out What It Really Means | Say in plain words what a figure of speech is telling you. |
| Similes | Read a comparison made with like or as. |
| Metaphors | Read a comparison that says one thing IS another. |
| Personification | Spot something not human doing something only people do. |
| Idioms | Learn set phrases whose meaning the words do not give you. |
| Who the Story Is About | Name the characters in a story and say what one of them is like. |
| How a Character Feels | Name a feeling a story shows through what a character does. |
| Who the Story Is About | Name the character a story follows. |
| First, Next, and Last | Say what happened first, what came in between, and what came last. |
| Putting the Whole Story in Order | Arrange all the events of a story from beginning to end. |
| Finding the Problem | Name what goes wrong in a story. |
| Finding the Solution | Say how a story's problem gets resolved. |
| Summarizing a Story | Retell a story keeping only what matters. |
| Beginning, Middle, End | Say which part of a story an event belongs to, and what that part is for. |
| What a Character Wants, and What Is in the Way | Name both halves of a story problem: the want and the thing blocking it. |
| The Tries That Do Not Work | Follow the middle of a story as a run of attempts, and say why each fails. |
| The Moment It Turns | Find the one moment after which a story cannot go back. |
| Because of That, Not And Then | Follow a plot as a chain of causes instead of a list of events. |
| Topic or Theme? | Tell the subject of a story apart from what the story says about it. |
| What a Character Learns | Find the theme by watching what a character understands at the end that they did not understand at the start. |
| The Evidence for a Theme | Point to the detail that actually supports a theme, not just a true detail. |
| Themes Nobody Writes Down | Work out a theme from an ending, a silence, or a word the writer chose. |
| Objects That Carry the Message | Read the object or image a story keeps returning to. |
| Who Is Telling This | Find the teller of a text before deciding what the text means. |
| How Much the Teller Knows | Work out how far a teller can see, and what is therefore missing. |
| What the Teller Cannot See | Assemble what a text shows but its teller has not noticed. |
| What a Person Makes of It | Separate what happened from what a person in the text made of it. |
| Words That Give a View Away | Notice the single words that carry a teller's attitude. |
| Lines, Stanzas and Where a Poem Breaks | Read a poem's shape on the page as part of what it means. |
| Rhyme, Rhyme Scheme and Poems Without Either | Hear rhyme, name the pattern it makes, and read a poem that has none. |
| Repetition, Alliteration and the Sound of a Line | Notice what a poem's sounds are doing besides rhyming. |
| The Picture a Poem Puts in Your Head | Read the sensory pictures a poem or a stage sets, and say what they do. |
| Figures of Speech Inside a Poem | Read similes, metaphors and personification where poems pack them tightest. |
| Who Is Talking in a Poem | Identify the voice speaking a poem, and what that voice reveals. |
| Comparing on the Same Point | Name one point that both texts speak to before you say anything about either of them. |
| Patterns of Events Across Stories | Recognize the shape two stories share, and find the exact place where they stop sharing it. |
| Same Idea, Different Story | State what each text says about a shared subject, then compare the two statements. |
| Topic or Main Idea? | Tell what a text is about from what it says about it. |
| Finding the Main Idea | Say in one sentence what a whole text is telling you. |
| Main Ideas That Are Not Written Down | Work out the main idea when no sentence states it. |
| Details That Back It Up | Find the fact in a text that supports a particular idea. |
| Writing a Summary | Retell a text keeping only what matters. |
| Telling a Detail from the Main Idea | Spot the sentence that is only a detail. |
| Words That Give the Shape Away | Spot the words and sentences that tell you how a nonfiction text is organized. |
| Sequence: Time Order and Steps | Follow a text built on the order things happen or the order they are done. |
| Why the Author Wrote It | Name what a text was built to do, not just what it is about. |
| The Evidence for a Purpose | Point to the move in the text that proves what the writer wanted. |
| Who It Was Written For | Work out the reader a text was aimed at, and how you can tell. |
| The Author's Point of View | Say what the writer thinks about the subject, even when no opinion is stated. |
| Words That Take a Side | Notice how a writer's wording steers what a reader concludes. |
| Stated or Implied? | Tell what a text says outright from what it only lets you conclude. |
| What One Detail Tells You | Draw the conclusion a single detail supports, and stop there. |
| The Line That Proves It | Given a claim, find the sentence in the text that actually supports it. |
| Putting Two Details Together | Reach a conclusion that no single sentence in the text states. |
| Which Evidence Is Strongest | Choose between two relevant details by asking which one settles it. |
| Inference or Guess? | Spot the step that goes past what the text can carry. |
| What Your Sources Are Really About | State the one question a set of sources is answering, precisely enough to compare them. |
| Where Sources Agree | Find the ground two sources share before you look at where they split. |
| Where Sources Disagree | Locate the exact sentence where two sources stop agreeing. |
| A Fact Fight or a Meaning Fight | Tell whether two sources disagree about what happened or about what it means. |
| What Each Source Chose to Include | Notice what one source puts first, and what another leaves out entirely. |
| Choosing the Source That Can Answer It | Match a question to the source that is actually able to answer it. |
| Building One Answer from Several Sources | Write one sentence that holds everything the sources support and nothing more. |
| What None of the Sources Tells You | Name the question your sources leave open, and what would answer it. |
| The Main Idea of a History Text | Find what a history passage is really about. |
| Evidence in a History Text | Point to the detail that actually proves a claim. |
| Whose Story Is Being Told | Notice whose point of view a history text takes, and who is missing. |
| Reading a Source Like a Historian | Ask who made a source, when, and what they wanted it to do. |
| When Sources Disagree | Compare accounts of the same event instead of trusting one. |
| What a Noun Is | Name the words that stand for a person, place, or thing. |
| What a Verb Is | Name the words that tell what someone does. |
| Finding the Verb in a Sentence | Pick out the verb inside a whole sentence. |
| Making the Verb Match | Choose a verb form that matches one thing or many things. |
| Finding Both Parts | Pick out the noun and the verb in the same sentence. |
| What an Adjective Is | Name the words that tell what a noun is like. |
| Which Noun the Adjective Describes | Match an adjective to the one noun it is telling you about. |
| What an Adverb Is | Name the words that tell more about what happened. |
| Spotting a Fragment | Tell when a group of words stops before it is a sentence. |
| Spotting a Run-On | Notice when two sentences have been jammed into one. |
| Three Ways to Fix a Run-On | Repair a run-on, and choose the repair that fits the meaning. |
| Joining Two Sentences | Combine short sentences with the joining word the meaning needs. |
| Past, Present, or Future? | Tell from the verb whether a sentence is about the past, the present, or the future. |
| Building the Past Tense with -ed | Add -ed to a verb and make the spelling changes the ending forces. |
| Verbs That Do Not Take -ed | Use the past tense of the irregular verbs, and keep it apart from the participle. |
| Actions Caught in the Middle | Use am, is, are, was, were and will be with an -ing verb to show an action in progress. |
| Have, Has and Had | Use have, has and had with a past participle, and say what had adds. |
| Clause, or Just a Phrase? | Tell an independent clause, a dependent clause, and a phrase apart. |
| All Seven Coordinating Conjunctions | Choose among the seven - and, but, or, so, for, nor, and yet - by what each one claims. |
| The Comma Before a Joining Word | When a joining word holds two halves together, the comma goes in only if a whole sentence follows it. |
| Subordinating Conjunctions | Use because, although, unless, until, and their kin to say how two ideas relate. |
| Where the Comma Goes in a Complex Sentence | Comma after a leading dependent clause, none after a trailing one. |
| Conjunctions That Come in Pairs | Use both...and, either...or, neither...nor, and not only...but also, with matching halves. |
| Simple, Compound, Complex | Name the structure of any sentence by counting its clauses. |
| Knowing When You Have a Sentence | Tell a finished sentence from a piece of one. |
| Joining Two Sentences | Put two related sentences together without making a run-on. |
| Choosing the Right Joining Word | Pick the joining word that states the real relationship. |