40 core topics + 69 prerequisite topics taught as needed · approximately 35 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.
| Exigence: What Made This Necessary [H] | Identify the pressure that called a text into being, and separate it from the occasion. |
| The Audience Under the Audience [H] | Tell apart who a text is addressed to, who it is written for, and who is meant to overhear it. |
| The Speaker Is a Construction [H] | Describe the version of a writer that a text builds, and why that version fits the situation. |
| Stated Purpose and Working Purpose [H] | Separate what a text says it is doing from the job it is actually built to do. |
| What the Writer Was Not Free to Say [H] | Find the limits a situation places on a text, and read what those limits shaped. |
| Kairos: Why Now [H] | Judge how a text's timing changes what it can accomplish. |
| The Shape the Medium Demands [H] | Explain how the form a text is delivered in changes what it can and cannot do. |
| When a Text Changes Situations [H] | Track what happens to a text's meaning when it is carried out of the situation it was written for. |
| Ethos: The Credit a Text Builds [H] | Identify how a text earns, spends or refuses the reader's trust. |
| Pathos: Feeling Put to Work [H] | Explain how a text produces feeling, and what the feeling is being asked to do. |
| Logos: The Part That Survives Dislike [H] | Test the reasoning and evidence in an argument on its own terms. |
| Which Appeal Is Carrying the Weight [H] | Decide which appeal a move depends on when a move is doing more than one thing. |
| Giving Ground on Purpose [H] | Analyze a concession as a trade: what was surrendered, and what it bought. |
| Word Choice as Strategy [H] | Explain what a chosen word does that its plainest alternative would not. |
| Arrangement, Repetition and the Short Sentence [H] | Show how sentence shape and order do persuasive work that the words alone do not. |
| Would This Move Land on This Reader [H] | Judge a strategy against the audience it was aimed at, including what it risks. |
| Who Made This, and What Were They Rewarded For [H] | Judge a source by its expertise, its incentives and what it discloses - without treating an interest as a verdict. |
| Checking a Source by Leaving It [H] | Verify a claim from outside the page that makes it, using independent records rather than the page's own account of itself. |
| Following a Claim Back to Its Origin [H] | Trace a reported finding through each retelling to the document it started in, and name what changed on the way. |
| The Frame Around the Facts [H] | Analyze how headline, emphasis, order and image shape a reader's conclusion without any sentence being false. |
| Numbers That Are True and Misleading [H] | Interrogate a statistic for its denominator, its base rate, its measurement and how its sample was drawn. |
| Does the Evidence Reach the Conclusion [H] | Test whether the evidence offered actually supports the claim made, and name what would count against it. |
| Why This Reached You [H] | Explain how ranking, sharing and timing decide what you see, and why a feed cannot measure how common a view is. |
| Is the Evidence What It Claims to Be [H] | Test whether an image, clip or recording is genuine and correctly placed - and say so when the answer is that you cannot tell. |
| 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. |
| What the Frame Left Out [H] | Read an image for the decision at its edges - what was excluded, and what the exclusion does to a viewer. |
| Everything Inside the Frame [H] | Say what the arrangement inside a shot - light, staging, color, selection - is doing to the viewer's reading of it. |
| The Argument in the Join [H] | Name the claim a cut makes by placing one shot next to another, and test whether the material supports it. |
| Speed, Duration, and the Unbroken Take [H] | Work out what a shot's length or speed is asserting, and which questions duration can and cannot settle. |
| The Track You Are Not Listening To [H] | Separate sound the characters can hear from sound only the audience can, and say what each one is telling the viewer to do. |
| Whose Account You Are Standing Inside [H] | Identify whose knowledge and whose interests an image places a viewer inside, and how that placement was built. |
| What an Image Can Prove [H] | State precisely what a photograph or a recording establishes, and where its authority stops. |
| What the Display Was Built to Answer [H] | Read a chart, poster or graphic as a made argument, without treating every design decision as a trick. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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 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. |
| 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. |
| Facts, Judgments, and Honest Uncertainty | Sort what can be checked from what is argued, and spot a writer naming their own limits. |
| Two Writers, One Subject | Compare two texts on one subject and find the exact point where they part. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Claims and the Evidence Under Them | Separate what a history text asserts from what it shows. |
| When Sources Disagree | Compare accounts of the same event instead of trusting one. |
| Spotting a Fragment | Tell when a group of words stops before it is a sentence. |
| 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. |
| The Sentence the Others Are About | Find or choose the sentence a paragraph is built on. |
| Details That Actually Support | Choose detail that backs the claim you made. |
| A Claim or a Fact? | Tell a position someone could argue with from a fact they could check. |
| The Reason Under a Claim | Find the sentence that says why a position holds. |
| Evidence That Actually Proves It | Tell measured evidence from a stronger way of repeating an opinion. |
| Claims You Cannot Defend | Recognize a claim pushed past what any evidence could support. |
| Answering the Other Side | Answer the strongest objection instead of talking past it. |
| 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. |
| How Far the Evidence Actually Reaches | Separate a claim from its reasons and evidence, judge whether the evidence reaches as far as the claim goes, and spot a piece that does not belong at all. |