89 core topics + 131 prerequisite topics taught as needed · approximately 70 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. |
| Verse, Prose, and the Moment of the Switch [H] | Read the register a character is speaking in, and read what a change of register means. |
| Soliloquy and Aside [H] | Read a character thinking alone, and treat that thinking as an argument rather than a confession. |
| The Stage Directions Inside the Dialogue [H] | Reconstruct what happens physically on stage from the lines themselves. |
| Quibbles: One Word Doing Two Jobs [H] | Read a pun as an argument being made, not as a joke interrupting one. |
| Image Patterns and What They Argue [H] | Follow an image across a scene and say what claim it is quietly making. |
| What the Line Does Not Say [H] | Read the meaning a character conveys by refusing to state it. |
| What the Audience Knows [H] | Track the gap between what the audience knows and what a character knows, and say what the gap does to a line. |
| Persuasion in Front of an Audience [H] | Analyze a stage speech as a set of moves aimed at the people standing there. |
| 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. |
| What the Line Is Doing [H] | Read the shape of a text - line, stanza, frame, verse against prose - as part of what it means rather than as the box the meaning came in. |
| The Word and Where It Came From [H] | Hear a word's register - plain or learned, native or imported - and say what choosing that register does to the sentence around it. |
| The Figure That Does the Thinking [H] | Read an allegorical figure, an emblem or an extended conceit as an argument being carried out, rather than decoding it into a single word. |
| The Speaker a Text Builds [H] | Separate the writer from the speaker the writing constructs, and say what that constructed speaker is built to accomplish. |
| What the Text Knows and the Speaker Does Not [H] | Locate the gap between what a speaker says and what the text lets a reader see, and say who is standing on each side of it. |
| What the Text Will Not Say [H] | Work out what a text has deliberately left out, and hold the difference between what its silence supports and what it merely permits. |
| How a Poem Reasons [H] | Trace the case a literary text is making - its premises, its concessions and its turn - without being asked whether you agree with it. |
| How the Words Reached You [H] | Ask how a text physically got to the page in front of you, and say what that history does to a claim about what the text says. |
| The Voice on the Page Is a Made Thing [H] | Work out who is speaking, to whom, and what they want from being believed. |
| What the Text Will Not Say [H] | Read the meaning a text carries in its evasions, pauses and unasked-for denials. |
| The Image That Does the Arguing [H] | Read a figure as a move in an argument rather than as an ornament on one. |
| Tone, and the Distance a Writer Keeps [H] | Hear the attitude a text takes toward its material and toward you. |
| Form as an Argument [H] | Explain what a form promises a reader, and what a writer's departure from it means. |
| A Theme Held Open [H] | State what a text argues about how things are, and then test it on the part that resists. |
| Movements in Argument With Each Other [H] | Read a text against what it was written to oppose, and ask who wrote the label you are using. |
| The Line That Settles It [H] | Choose the quotation that separates your reading from the nearest rival reading. |
| 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. |
| Knowing What to Leave Out | Spot the detail a summary does not need. |
| 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. |
| Saying a Theme in One Sentence | Word a theme so it is neither about one character nor true of every story. |
| 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. |
| What a Story Does Not Say | Refuse a lesson the text will not support, including the tidy one. |
| 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. |
| One Event, Two Views | Explain why two honest accounts of one event can disagree. |
| Telling It From Somewhere Else | Predict what changes when the same events get a different teller. |
| Why the Author Chose This Teller | Explain what a writer gains and loses by choosing a particular teller. |
| 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. |
| How a Play Is Written Down | Read a script: cast list, scene heading, dialogue and stage directions. |
| 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. |
| Description: Groups, Parts and Kinds | Recognize a text that describes one thing closely or sorts things into kinds. |
| Sequence: Time Order and Steps | Follow a text built on the order things happen or the order they are done. |
| Compare and Contrast | Read a text that sets two things side by side and says how they are alike and different. |
| Cause and Effect | Trace a text where each thing described makes the next thing happen. |
| Problem and Solution | Read a text that states a difficulty and then what was done about it. |
| Naming the Structure of a Whole Text | Decide which structure a whole passage is built on, and notice when it uses more than one. |
| Why the Writer Chose That Shape | Explain what a text's structure does for the reader, and what would be lost in another shape. |
| Why the Author Wrote It | Name what a text was built to do, not just what it is about. |
| Why This Part Is Here | Explain the job a single paragraph, sentence or phrase is doing. |
| 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. |
| An Objective Summary | Say what a text argued, in its own terms, without taking a side. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Claims and the Evidence Under Them | Separate what a history text asserts from what it shows. |
| 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. |
| Saying More Than the Bare Fact | Add detail that answers a question a reader would ask. |
| 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. |
| The Sentence the Others Are About | Find or choose the sentence a paragraph is built on. |
| A Claim or a Fact? | Tell a position someone could argue with from a fact they could check. |
| Explaining or Arguing? | Tell a sentence that explains from one that argues, tells a story, or gives orders. |
| Saying What You Will Explain | Open a report with a sentence that says what about the subject will be explained. |
| Sounding Like a Report | Keep the writer, the reader, and casual talk out of an explanation. |
| The One Thing It Is All Serving | State the idea a whole text is built to serve when it is never printed, and write a summary that carries the point instead of the best detail. |
| The Line You Would Put Your Finger On | Pick the one detail that settles a particular claim, and say why the other true details do not reach it. |
| What the Text Made True Without Printing It | Build an answer the writer never wrote, from clues on the page plus what you know, and stop exactly where the clues stop. |
| The Shape, and the Job of One Part | Name how a text is built, and explain what one paragraph, line or stage direction is doing in the place where it sits. |
| What You Know That They Do Not | Track the gap between what you have been told and what a person inside the text knows, in stories and in true accounts alike. |