295 core topics + 228 prerequisite topics taught as needed · approximately 179 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. |
| Where the Line Stops [H] | Read a line break as a decision, and say what the break is doing. |
| The Shape the Poem Agreed To [H] | Identify a poem's form and say what obeying it costs and buys. |
| Counting the Beat, and What Breaks It [H] | Hear a poem's metrical pattern and read the places where it departs. |
| Rhyme, Near Rhyme and What They Yoke [H] | Read a rhyme scheme, hear a near rhyme, and say what the pairing does. |
| What the Sound Is Doing [H] | Name a sound pattern in a line and say what it does to the reading. |
| The Line That Comes Back [H] | Read a repeated line for what has changed around it. |
| The Image That Carries the Argument [H] | Read a concrete detail for the claim it is making without stating it. |
| The Voice and What It Will Not Say [H] | Identify a poem's speaker and read the gap between what is said and known. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Finding the Claim [H] | Locate the exact proposition an argument is asking you to accept. |
| What the Evidence Can Carry [H] | Judge evidence by relevance, sufficiency and where it came from, not by how impressive it sounds. |
| The Reasoning in Between [H] | Name the unwritten step that connects a piece of evidence to the claim it is offered for. |
| What the Argument Is Standing On [H] | Surface the unstated premise an argument needs, and test what happens if it fails. |
| Concession, Rebuttal, and the Difference [H] | Tell apart granting a point, answering it, and refusing to engage with it. |
| Where the Reasoning Breaks [H] | Name what has gone wrong in a piece of reasoning, precisely enough to say what would fix it. |
| How Far the Claim Reaches [H] | Match the size of a claim to the size of the evidence behind it. |
| What Would Settle It [H] | Compare two arguments by asking what evidence would decide between them. |
| 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 Parts Can and Cannot Tell You [H] | Narrow an unfamiliar academic word with its parts, then let the sentence choose. |
| Words That Are Not Interchangeable [H] | Hold apart two academic words that look almost the same and claim different things. |
| When an Ordinary Word Is a Technical Term [H] | Read a familiar word in the exact sense its field gives it, and restate it without smuggling the everyday sense back in. |
| The Phrases Academic Prose Is Built From [H] | Choose the verb that a fixed academic phrase actually takes. |
| The Word That Names the Logical Move [H] | Pick the connective that states the exact relation between two claims. |
| Saying What a Source Did [H] | Characterize another writer's move with a verb that claims exactly what she claimed. |
| Exactly How Much Is Being Claimed [H] | Choose the wording that claims precisely what a record supports, and name the fault when a claim outruns it. |
| What an Assignment Verb Demands [H] | Name the move a high school or college prompt is asking for before you start writing. |
| The Thesis Somebody Could Refuse [H] | Write a thesis that is arguable, specific, and binding on the essay that follows. |
| The Order of the Reasons [H] | Arrange an argument so each paragraph makes the next one possible. |
| What a Body Paragraph Owes [H] | Open a paragraph with a claim it can finish, and keep the paragraph to that claim. |
| Putting Evidence Into a Sentence [H] | Choose, frame and attribute evidence so a reader knows where it came from and what it is for. |
| The Sentences After the Evidence [H] | Write the reasoning that turns a piece of evidence into support for your claim. |
| Where the Other Side Goes [H] | Place, state and answer an objection so the reader's own doubt is dealt with. |
| The Seam Between Paragraphs [H] | Join paragraphs by naming the relationship between them, not by announcing that another one is coming. |
| Openings and Endings That Earn Their Space [H] | Open with the situation the argument is answering, and close with something the reader did not already have. |
| The Question a Search Can Finish [H] | Turn a topic into a research question that names what would count as an answer. |
| The Source That Can Answer This Claim [H] | Match a claim to the kind of record that could contain it, rather than to a general ranking of sources. |
| What This Source Was Built to Know [H] | Interrogate a source by its method and its purpose rather than by whether you like its conclusion. |
| Paraphrase, Patchwriting and the Line Between [H] | Rebuild a source's idea in your own architecture instead of translating its sentence word by word. |
| Which Sentences Owe a Citation [H] | Decide what a sentence owes a source by asking what was taken, not by counting matching words. |
| Saying What the Source Can Support [H] | Report a source so that a reader who could see the whole of it would call your sentence fair. |
| Reading a Citation Before Reading the Source [H] | Read what an entry and its locator already tell you about a source you have not opened. |
| Where the Line Actually Is [H] | Reason about an academic integrity case by asking what a reader has been told, not what the writer intended. |
| Following a Speech by Its Signposts [H] | Use a speaker's structural cues to hold the shape of an argument you cannot reread. |
| Naming the Move a Speaker Just Made [H] | Say what a speech is doing at a given turn, not merely what it is about. |
| The Concession and What It Buys [H] | Hear what a speaker gives away, and work out what giving it away purchased. |
| The Appeal That Is Doing Work [H] | Tell an appeal that carries a reason from one that only warms the room. |
| The Premise You Are Asked to Grant [H] | Catch the unstated premise a spoken argument needs you to accept. |
| How Big the Claim Actually Was [H] | Keep the limits a speaker put on a claim instead of remembering a bigger one. |
| Evidence Heard Once [H] | Separate what a speaker observed from what they concluded, and hear what a number counts. |
| The Distance Between the Argument and the Ask [H] | Measure how far a speaker's request reaches past what the argument established. |
| Words Science Uses Narrowly [H] | Read a technical term in its narrow sense instead of importing the everyday one. |
| Definitions That Are Really Instructions [H] | Find the sentence that says how something was measured, and see what it fixes. |
| What a Step Depends On [H] | Follow a technical procedure closely enough to say why a step is where it is. |
| The Table Inside the Prose [H] | Pull a quantitative pattern out of numbers that are printed in sentences. |
| Measurement or Inference [H] | Separate what a study observed from what it concluded, and name what the step between them rests on. |
| What a Control Rules Out [H] | Say which rival explanation a control eliminates, and which ones survive it. |
| What a Result Does Not License [H] | Hold a finding to the conditions, the range and the group it actually came from. |
| How a Technical Account Is Built [H] | Use the shape of a technical text to tell what each part is for. |
| Who Made This, and For Whom [H] | Read a document's provenance before its sentences, and say what that provenance lets it be evidence of. |
| What the Writer Could Actually Know [H] | Separate what a writer saw, counted or was told, and weigh each claim by the position it was made from. |
| What the Date Does to the Evidence [H] | Use when a document was written to decide what it can be evidence of, rather than to rank it against other accounts. |
| Who Was Meant to Read It [H] | Trace how the intended reader shapes what a document says, omits, and concedes. |
| What the Document Takes For Granted [H] | Name the belief a document never argues for, and treat it as evidence of what its readers were expected to grant. |
| Where Two Accounts Come Apart [H] | Compare two records of one event, locate what each was measuring, and name the third source that would settle it. |
| What Happened and Why It Happened [H] | Tell a claim about events apart from a claim about causes, and hold each to the evidence its kind requires. |
| What Is Not in the Document [H] | Judge what an omission can and cannot prove, using what the document was built to record. |
| Building a Meaning Out of the Parts [H] | Build a working meaning for a word you have never seen, from its parts, and let the sentence decide which reading survives. |
| The Prefix That Changed Its Spelling [H] | Find a Latin prefix that has taken the shape of the root behind it. |
| One Root, and the Prefix Decides [H] | Choose between words off one root, where the prefix is the whole remaining question. |
| What the Ending Does to the Word [H] | Read an ending as a claim about what is going on, not as a decoration on the base word. |
| Roots That Are Only Pretending [H] | Test a root by meaning rather than by letters, and catch the words that only look as though they have one. |
| Why the Word Is Spelled Like That [H] | Explain an English spelling by where the word came from, and read a spelling as evidence of an origin. |
| How a Word Got Where It Is [H] | Name the two ways a word's meaning moves, and read an etymology for what it actually explains. |
| Terms Built for One Field [H] | Read a technical term you have never seen by reading the classical parts it is assembled from. |
| The Splice and the Semicolon [H] | Tell a comma splice from a sentence whose comma is doing legitimate work, and choose the mark the joint actually calls for. |
| What Has to Come Before a Colon [H] | Apply the one test a colon has to pass: whatever stands in front of it must be able to end there. |
| Dashes, Commas, or Parentheses [H] | Mark an interruption with a pair that matches and closes, and read what the writer's choice of mark tells you. |
| Commas That Change Who You Mean [H] | Read a pair of commas around a clause as a claim about how many, and punctuate to say the one you mean. |
| Apostrophes in the Hard Cases [H] | Form a possessive by making the plural first, and keep joint possession, family names and plain plurals straight. |
| The Hyphen in a Compound Modifier [H] | Hyphenate words that work as one modifier in front of a noun, and read what a hyphen changes about the meaning. |
| Agreement Across a Phrase, a Group, and an Everyone [H] | Find the real subject of each verb when a phrase, a collective noun or an indefinite pronoun stands in the way. |
| Pronouns That Could Mean Two People [H] | Catch a pronoun that is grammatical and still leaves a reader guessing, and fix it without inventing a fact. |
| The Paragraph That Says Why [H] | Match a stated result to the passage that explains how it came about, and see what that explanation predicts. |
| Following the Pathway [H] | Track a multi-step biological pathway across paragraphs and work out what a break at one step would do to the rest. |
| What the Comparison Was Built to Show [H] | Read a described study for its comparison group and say what the design can and cannot establish. |
| Who the Result Is About [H] | Find the group a result was measured in and judge how far it can travel from there. |
| Relative Change and Actual Size [H] | Read a reported change against the baseline it is a change from, and tell a ratio apart from a difference. |
| Settled, Likely, Contested [H] | Sort the claims in a science text by how firmly the author is willing to stand behind each one. |
| What Stands In for What [H] | Spot a measurement standing in for something else and name what the substitution leaves out. |
| The Cost Named Beside the Benefit [H] | Read how a health text sets a benefit against a harm, and tell weighing apart from arguing. |
| What a Proxy Record Stands For [H] | Separate the quantity an earth science record actually contains from the quantity the author is claiming. |
| How the Record Was Made [H] | Read the method well enough to say what a choice of instrument, site or procedure fixes about the result. |
| What a Record Can Resolve [H] | Judge what a record is too coarse to show, and stop reading its silences as evidence of nothing happening. |
| Reading a Range Instead of a Number [H] | Use a stated uncertainty to decide what a result does and does not settle. |
| Observed Trend, Attributed Cause [H] | Find the exact place where a text stops reporting what was measured and starts explaining why. |
| What the Model Was Asked [H] | Say what a model produces, what it assumed, and which questions it was never built to answer. |
| Words Earth Science Uses Narrowly [H] | Read a technical term in the narrow sense the field gives it rather than the everyday sense it looks like. |
| How Far a Result Travels [H] | State the boundary of a study in place, time and quantity, and refuse conclusions that cross it. |
| Shall, May, Must: Duty Against Discretion [H] | Tell what a legal text commands from what it merely permits, and say who is bound by each. |
| The Definition Section Runs the Document [H] | Read a defined term as the document defines it, and trace what a change in the definition does to every section that uses the word. |
| Conditions, Triggers, and Deadlines [H] | Find what must happen before a legal provision does anything, and work out what follows when the condition fails. |
| Scope, Exception, and Proviso [H] | Work out exactly who and what a provision covers, and what an exception takes back out of it. |
| Who Is Given the Power, and How Far It Reaches [H] | Identify a grant of power in a governing document and state the limits written around it. |
| When Two Provisions Collide [H] | Decide whether two provisions really conflict, and use the document's own rules to say which governs. |
| Holding, Reasoning, and What a Court Did Not Decide [H] | Separate what a court decided from what it merely said, and read a reservation as the open question it is. |
| How a Dissent Reads the Majority [H] | Locate the exact point where a separate opinion parts from the majority, and test its account of the majority against the words it quotes. |
| What the Number Actually Counts [H] | Say what a figure counts, what it is divided by, and what it leaves out, before letting it settle anything. |
| Compared With What [H] | Find the year, the group or the imagined alternative that a claim of change is measured against. |
| Who Ends Up Paying [H] | Separate the party who hands over the money from the party whose income is smaller once prices have adjusted. |
| How the Measure Is Supposed to Work [H] | Trace the chain of steps from an instrument to the result it promises, and name the link that could fail. |
| What the Estimate Takes For Granted [H] | Find the condition a projection needs in order to come true, especially when the document never states it. |
| How the Tradeoff Is Framed [H] | Describe what a writer has put on each side of a scale, in what units, and what was left off it entirely. |
| What People Do Next [H] | Predict how people rearrange themselves around a measure, and what that does to the numbers the measure was sold on. |
| What Has to Be True First [H] | Find the condition a document requires before a step, including the ones that are never printed as a step. |
| Which Branch You Are On [H] | Match a symptom to the one branch of a troubleshooting tree the document sends it to, and act on that branch only. |
| What a Specification Leaves Out [H] | Hold a rating, a range or a coverage term to the conditions it names, and read its silence as silence rather than as permission. |
| What the Warning Covers [H] | Read a hazard statement for the exact hazard it names and for what it leaves standing. |
| Must, Should, and May [H] | Tell a requirement from a recommendation from a permission, and say whose duty each one is. |
| Words the Document Defines for Itself [H] | Carry a document's own definition of a term to every later sentence that uses it, even where the ordinary sense would read smoothly. |
| Where the Wording Could Go Two Ways [H] | Locate the sentence two careful readers would carry out two different ways, and say what each reading would do. |
| How a Manual Is Put Together [H] | Use a document's architecture - sections, notes, cross-references and precedence rules - to find what governs and where it lives. |
| The Sense the Sentence Chose [H] | Say which of a familiar word's several meanings a particular sentence has selected. |
| What Did the Deciding [H] | Name the part of a sentence that settles which meaning a word is carrying. |
| What Job the Word Is Doing [H] | Use the grammatical slot a word is standing in to rule out the meanings it cannot be carrying. |
| Find the Sentence That Means It [H] | Work backward from a stated meaning to the sentence that actually puts the word to that use. |
| One Word, Every Blank [H] | Find the single word that fills several blanks at once, carrying a different meaning in each. |
| The Same Word Twice [H] | Compare two sentences that share a word and decide whether they share its meaning. |
| Words That Face Both Ways [H] | Read a word that carries two opposite meanings and let the sentence settle which one is in play. |
| The Meaning That Moves Mid-Argument [H] | Catch an argument that quietly changes what one of its own words means between the premise and the conclusion. |
| What a Fixed Phrase Actually Means [H] | Read a fixed phrase for the meaning it carries, not for the meaning its words add up to. |
| The Picture Inside the Phrase [H] | Write a fixed phrase the way it is actually fixed, by recovering the picture the words came out of. |
| One Verb, Four Particles, Four Meanings [H] | Read a phrasal verb as a single unit, where the small word after the verb is the word that decides the meaning. |
| What a Reference Is Claiming [H] | Say which one feature of a shared story a writer is borrowing, and hold it apart from everything else the story contains. |
| Choosing the Reference That Fits [H] | Match a situation to the reference whose shape it actually has, rather than to the one whose mood it shares. |
| Figures the Language Chose, Figures the Writer Chose [H] | Tell a metaphor that is simply the ordinary word for a thing from one a writer built and means you to see. |
| When a Dead Metaphor Wakes Up [H] | Catch the everyday phrase that becomes visible again because its own picture belongs to the subject, and repair it without losing the claim. |
| Mixed and Strained Figures [H] | Find the sentence whose two pictures cannot both be looked at, and repair it by finishing the picture it started in. |
| Hedge or Booster [H] | Tell a verb that only reports how a result sits with a claim from one that asserts the claim. |
| What a Quantifier Commits You To [H] | Read most, some, up to and at least as the exact sizes of claim they are. |
| Words That Claim a Cause [H] | Separate wording that reports two things traveling together from wording that says one moved the other. |
| What One Word Changed [H] | Say what a single word swapped into a sentence adds to, or takes away from, the claim. |
| Where the Claim Stops [H] | Read the phrase that says how far a claim reaches, and work out what a new result can and cannot touch. |
| A Hedge That Says Nothing [H] | Tell a hedge that names a real limit from one that only makes the claim impossible to check. |
| "No Evidence" Is Not "No Effect" [H] | Keep apart a report that a search came up empty and a report that there was nothing to find. |
| More Than What? [H] | Read a comparative claim for the baseline it is standing on and usually does not name. |
| The Sentence That Says It Twice [H] | Find the sentence in a draft that changes nothing a reader already knew, and cut it. |
| The Verb Buried in a Noun [H] | Move an action out of a noun and back into the verb - and leave it in the noun when the noun is doing work. |
| The Noun a Reader Can See [H] | Replace an abstract noun with the thing the draft has already named - without inventing a detail or narrowing the claim. |
| Where the Paragraph Breaks [H] | Put the paragraph break where the subject changes, not where the block of text starts to look long. |
| A Transition Is a Claim [H] | Choose the connective that names the relation two sentences actually stand in, and catch one that asserts a relation they do not. |
| What the Next Sentence Starts With [H] | Open each sentence on what the reader was just handed and save the new material for the end, so a paragraph pulls itself along. |
| When a Rule Should Be Broken [H] | Decide whether a fragment, a short sentence or a repeated word is doing work here - and put it back when it is not. |
| The Sentence That Breaks the Voice [H] | Find the sentence that steps out of the voice a draft has established - in level of language, or in the stance it takes. |
| The Thesis That Explains [H] | Open an explanatory essay with a thesis that promises understanding rather than a position to defend. |
| Organized by Idea, Not by Source [H] | Plan an explanation around the parts of the account rather than around the order the writer read things in. |
| Defining a Term the Reader Does Not Have [H] | Write a definition a reader who has never met the word could use to recognize a new instance. |
| The Comparison That Carries the Structure [H] | Choose a comparison that maps the mechanism, and say where it stops working. |
| Illustration, Not Proof [H] | Use a particular case to make an idea visible without claiming it establishes one. |
| Summarizing a Process, Explaining Why It Works [H] | Tell a sentence that reports a step from one that says why the step is needed. |
| Ending an Explanation [H] | Close an explanatory essay by consolidating the account instead of calling for action. |
| Where the Verdict Gets In [H] | Keep the writer's own judgment out of an explanation while still reporting the judgments other people made. |
| The Moment, Not the Year [H] | Choose one occasion small enough to show in full instead of a stretch of time that can only be summarized. |
| Where a Personal Essay Starts [H] | Open inside the occasion rather than in the background, the definition or the announcement in front of it. |
| The Sentence Only You Could Have Written [H] | Tell a detail that carries information nobody else could supply from one that any writer in the same situation would have. |
| Change You Can Watch Happen [H] | Show a change by putting the writer back into the same situation, instead of announcing that they are different now. |
| The Writer Then and the Writer Now [H] | Keep the earlier self limited to what it knew, and let the present self look back openly instead of smuggling knowledge into the scene. |
| The Sentence That Tells the Reader What to Feel [H] | Cut the sentence that names the size of a feeling and keep the one that gives a reader something to feel it from. |
| The Turn That Earns Its Insight [H] | Write the reflective turn so it names what the scene showed and goes one step past it, rather than asserting a lesson the scene never earned. |
| Ending Without Handing Down a Moral [H] | Close on the situation as it stands instead of a lesson, a pledge, a summary or a verdict on yourself. |
| What the Prompt Actually Asks [H] | Read a timed prompt for the job it sets rather than for the subject it is about. |
| What the Prompt Does Not Ask For [H] | Tell what a timed prompt requires from work it merely permits, and drop the second kind first. |
| The Two Minutes Before You Write [H] | Spend the first two minutes on the decisions a draft cannot be rewritten around. |
| The Position You Can Defend by the Bell [H] | Choose the position the available minutes and the available evidence can actually support. |
| What Fits Before the Bell [H] | Cut a plan down to what the clock can carry without dropping anything the prompt requires. |
| Where the Minutes Go [H] | Decide what to do next from the state of the draft and the minutes on the clock. |
| When to Abandon a Paragraph [H] | Decide whether a paragraph that has drifted should be cut, re-topped, trimmed, tied off, or left alone. |
| Four Minutes Left [H] | Spend the last minutes of a timed essay on the repair with the highest return that fits in the time. |
| The Preposition a Verb Expects [H] | Choose the preposition an English verb actually takes, and use the rest of the sentence when one verb takes two. |
| The Preposition an Adjective Expects [H] | Finish an adjective or a noun with the preposition it takes, and close a comparison built on a word that already carries one. |
| Words That Point One Way [H] | Decide which end of an exchange your subject is standing on, and choose the word or preposition that points that way. |
| The Verb That Takes an Object, and Its Twin [H] | Choose between lie and lay, sit and set, rise and raise by asking whether anything in the sentence is being acted on. |
| Pairs Where the Difference Does Work [H] | Choose between two real words whose difference changes what the sentence claims, using the evidence the sentence itself supplies. |
| What Is Actually Being Counted [H] | Choose fewer or less, number or amount, by asking whether the sentence counts things one at a time or measures a single quantity. |
| Comparing One Thing With the Same Kind of Thing [H] | Check that both sides of a comparison name the same kind of thing, and finish an incomplete comparison so it can be read only one way. |
| A Rule That Carries Meaning and One That Does Not [H] | Tell a change that alters what a sentence says from one that only obeys a rule English never had, and spend the editing pass on the first. |
| Words That Say It Twice [H] | Cut a modifier that repeats its own noun, and keep the one that rules something out. |
| The Five-Word Detour [H] | Replace a stock phrase with the single word it was standing in for, and notice when the single word would say something else. |
| The Opener That Reports Nothing [H] | Delete an opening that only delays the subject, and keep an opening that is carrying the claim. |
| A Clause That Could Be a Phrase [H] | Shrink a clause to a phrase when the facts survive it, and leave it alone when they do not. |
| Two Sentences, One Relation [H] | Fold two sentences into one so that the grammar carries the relation the draft stated, and no relation it did not. |
| When Shorter Says Less [H] | Trim a sentence to the point where the next cut would take a fact with it, and stop there. |
| A Cut That Lets In a Second Reading [H] | Spot the shortening that gives a sentence a meaning it did not have, and put back only the words that rule it out. |
| What a Section Is For [H] | Say what a paragraph or section does for the whole argument, not what it says. |
| Why It Comes in This Order [H] | Explain what the sequence of an argument assumes about its reader, and what a rearrangement would break. |
| What a Concession Buys [H] | Identify what a writer gives up in a long argument and what the surrender purchases. |
| The Sentence That Turns It [H] | Find the hinge of a long argument and say exactly what changes there. |
| The Example That Comes Back [H] | Explain what a returning image or example does the second time that it could not do the first. |
| What Would Be Lost [H] | Test a section by deleting it and naming precisely what the argument no longer has. |
| Where the Words Went [H] | Read the amount of space a writer spends as evidence of what the writer expects to be argued with about. |
| The Last Paragraph's Job [H] | Say what an ending does beyond summarizing, and what it deliberately leaves the reader holding. |
| Percent of What [H] | Find the quantity a percentage is a percentage of, and say what changes when a different quantity is put underneath it. |
| Absolute Change and Relative Change [H] | Report a change both ways - as a count and as a proportion of where it started - and say which one the argument in front of you needs. |
| What a Rate Corrects For [H] | Read the divisor of a rate, name what it holds constant, and name what it leaves untouched. |
| Where the Comparison Starts [H] | Ask which figure a change is measured from, and say how a different starting point would move the claim. |
| What an Average Hides [H] | Treat an average as one point inside a distribution, and say what a median, a spread or a share above a line would add to it. |
| When a Correlation Carries a Cause [H] | Separate a measured association from the causal sentence an argument wants it to support, and name the comparison that would settle it. |
| The Difference and the Error [H] | Weigh a reported difference against how far the measurement could move on its own, and say when a gap is too small for the method to see. |
| Carrying a Trend Forward [H] | Say what an "at this rate" sentence is assuming, and name a reason the measured rate might not hold. |
| Where the Breath Goes [H] | Break a forty-word sentence at its joints, so that no group of words arrives in pieces. |
| The Sentence That Has Not Finished Yet [H] | Keep the voice open through a sentence that stacks its conditions first and states its point last. |
| Holding the Sentence Across an Interruption [H] | Hold a sentence open across an aside, and come back to the main clause at exactly the level you left it. |
| What Each Mark Asks Your Voice For [H] | Give each mark on the page the pause and the pitch it actually asks for, instead of pausing the same way at all of them. |
| The Word the Sentence Turns On [H] | Put the stress on the one word the sentence before it did not already supply, and hear what that stress commits you to. |
| A Line Is Not the Sentence Inside It [H] | Read verse by the sentence and by the line at the same time, and hear what a poet gets out of the difference. |
| Making the Structure Audible [H] | Read a speech so that a listener can hear the shape the writer built into it. |
| The Tone the Paragraph Earns [H] | Decide how a line has to be read from what the paragraph around it has already put on the table. |
| What a Chapter Opening Takes for Granted [H] | Identify what a page of a novel expects the reader to already know, and say what the writing buys by refusing to explain it. |
| Scenes That Rhyme [H] | Read a scene against an earlier one it repeats, and state what the difference between them measures. |
| How Close the Telling Stands [H] | Track how far the narration is standing from a character, and say what a move nearer or further away is doing. |
| What the Second Story Says About the First [H] | Explain what a subplot contributes to the main story it never touches. |
| The Image That Comes Back [H] | Say what an object or image picks up by returning late in a book after being planted early. |
| Reading From Where You Stand [H] | Judge what a scene's placement in a long book does to what the scene means. |
| Where a Chapter Stops [H] | Explain what a chapter's chosen beginning and ending do, and what a break between chapters costs or buys. |
| The Person the Book Kept [H] | Say what a novel accomplishes by bringing back a character it introduced briefly and left alone for hundreds of pages. |
| Tracing a Rule Written in Prose [H] | Follow a decision rule stated in sentences and say what it does with a particular case, including the cases it settles quietly. |
| What the Trade Costs [H] | Name what an engineering choice buys, what it pays with, and which of the two the text has left unstated. |
| The Constraint That Rules It Out [H] | Find the stated limit that eliminates a candidate, and say why nothing the candidate is good at brings it back. |
| Requirement or Preference [H] | Tell a line that can disqualify a candidate from a line that can only rank the candidates left, and use each for what it can do. |
| What a Failure Analysis Establishes [H] | Separate what a failure investigation proved from what it merely failed to rule out, and tell a cause from a condition. |
| What a Part Promises [H] | Hold a component's promise to exactly what it covers, and name what it deliberately leaves to something else. |
| What Changes When It Gets Bigger [H] | Say which quantity is fixed, which grows, and how fast, when a described design is made larger or busier. |
| Which Number Was Measured [H] | Read a quoted figure for the quantity it measures and the conditions it was measured under, before reading it as a claim about performance. |
| Hearing Rhymes | Tell when two words end with the same sound. |
| Counting Syllables | Break a word into its beats. |
| Hearing the First Sound | Tell which sound a word starts with. |
| Hearing the Last Sound | Tell which sound a word ends with. |
| Hearing the Middle Vowel Sound | Find the vowel sound in the middle of a short word. |
| Blending Sounds into Words | Push separate sounds together to make a word. |
| Words That Begin Alike | Group words by their beginning sound. |
| Capital and Lowercase Letters | Match every capital letter to its lowercase partner. |
| Letter Sounds | Say the sound each letter stands for. |
| Short Vowel Sounds | Hear and write the five short vowel sounds. |
| Reading Short Words | Sound out and read consonant-vowel-consonant words. |
| Word Families | Read a whole set of words by learning one ending. |
| 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. |
| Finding the Base Word | Strip the extra parts off a word to find the word underneath. |
| What a Prefix Means | Know what the common prefixes do to a word. |
| Using a Prefix to Read a Word | Work out what a prefixed word means without being told. |
| What a Suffix Means | Know what the common suffixes add to a word. |
| Using a Suffix to Read a Word | Work out what a word with a suffix means. |
| Reading a Word You Have Never Seen | Work out an unfamiliar word from its prefix, base, and suffix. |
| Endings Change a Word's Job | See how a suffix turns one kind of word into another. |
| Choosing the Right Form | Pick the form of a word that a sentence actually needs. |
| What a Root Is | Find the root inside a long word and tell it from a base word. |
| What the Common Roots Mean | Know what the roots that build academic English actually mean. |
| Words That Share a Root | Sort words into families by the root they are built on. |
| Words Built from Two Roots | Read a word built out of two roots by putting both part meanings together, in order. |
| One Root, Many Prefixes | Use the prefix to tell apart words built on the same root. |
| Reading a Word You Have Never Met | Work out an unfamiliar word from its root and the sentence together. |
| When the Letters Lie | Test a root by meaning, not by letters, and catch the look-alikes. |
| Greek Spelling Clues | Spell the Greek words in science and math, and know why they look odd. |
| Words That Sound the Same | Recognize two words that share one sound and nothing else. |
| Choosing the Right Spelling | Use the meaning of a sentence to choose between two spellings. |
| its and it's, your and you're | Tell a contraction from a possessive using the long-form test. |
| 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. |
| Three Kinds of School Word | Sort a word into everyday, used in every subject, or belonging to one subject. |
| The Words Every Subject Uses | Give the exact meaning of the words that show up in every subject. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| What a Heading Promises | Use a title or a heading to say what a part of a page will be about. |
| 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. |
| Cause and Effect | Trace a text where each thing described makes the next thing happen. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| The Main Idea of a Science Text | Find what a science passage is really explaining. |
| Science Words Defined in Place | Work out a technical word from the sentence that introduces it. |
| Following a Process in Order | Track the steps of a life cycle or a process. |
| Cause and Effect in Science | Say why something happens, using the text. |
| Finding the Evidence | Point to the sentence that proves a claim. |
| Words Earth Science Redefines | Read an earth science term for its exact meaning, not its everyday one. |
| Loops, Not Lines | Follow a cause around a loop instead of straight down a list. |
| What Can and Cannot Be Predicted | Tell a real prediction from a question no method can answer. |
| How We Know What Nobody Watched | Name the measurement that supports a claim about something nobody saw happen. |
| Physical Science Words, Defined in Place | Work out a physical science term from the sentence that introduces it. |
| The Point of a Physical Science Text | Find the mechanism a physical science passage is really explaining. |
| Running the Mechanism Forward | Say why something physical happens, and follow the chain past one step. |
| Reading the Measurements | Read numbers in a science passage for size, unit and what they compare. |
| Which Sentence Actually Proves It | Point to the detail in a science text that settles a particular claim. |
| Reading a Fair Test | Find what an investigation changed and what it deliberately held still. |
| The Main Idea of a History Text | Find what a history passage is really about. |
| Causes and Consequences | Explain why something happened, and what it led to. |
| 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. |
| What the History Actually Says | Use what the passage taught you to answer a real history question. |
| 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. |
| Civics Words With Exact Jobs | Work out what a government word means from the sentence around it. |
| Who Holds Which Power | Sort any government action by which job it is and at which level. |
| Steps, and Where They Stop | Follow a civic process in order and find the points where it can end. |
| 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. |
| Sentence, Fragment, or Run-On? | Sort any group of words into complete, too short, or too long. |
| 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. |
| Keeping the Tense Steady | Notice a sentence that slips into a different tense and put it back. |
| Making the Verb Match Its Subject | Match a present-tense verb, including am, is and are, to its subject. |
| Subjects That Trick You | Find the real subject when a phrase, a group word or a There sentence hides it. |
| Commas in a List | Separate three or more items in a sentence with commas. |
| Apostrophes in Contractions | Put the apostrophe exactly where the missing letters were. |
| Apostrophes That Show Ownership | Show who owns something with 's or s'. |
| its, it's, and the Plural That Needs No Apostrophe | Choose between look-alike words that an apostrophe tells apart. |
| Clause, or Just a Phrase? | Tell an independent clause, a dependent clause, and a phrase apart. |
| Prepositions and the Phrases They Start | Find a prepositional phrase and say where it starts and stops. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| A Reason That Just Says It Again | Spot a reason that goes in a circle instead of forward. |
| 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 Shape of an Argument | Name the job each sentence in an argument is doing. |
| 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. |
| Putting Facts Where They Belong | Group related facts under the heading that answers the same question. |
| Sentences That Add Something | Develop a point with real information instead of repeating it louder. |
| Defining a Word for Your Reader | Write a definition that names the kind of thing and what sets it apart. |
| Sounding Like a Report | Keep the writer, the reader, and casual talk out of an explanation. |
| Revising and Editing Are Different Jobs | Tell a change that fixes what a piece says from one that fixes how it is written. |
| Cutting Words That Do No Work | Cut the words that repeat something the sentence has already said. |
| Pronouns That Point at Nothing | Find a pronoun a reader cannot trace back and rewrite it so they can. |
| What a Spellchecker Cannot Catch | Catch a correctly spelled word that is the wrong word. |
| A Question Worth Researching | Turn a subject into a question that sources can actually settle. |
| Does This Source Answer My Question? | Tell a source that answers your question from one that merely shares it. |
| Who Wrote It, and Why | Weigh a source by its author, its date and its purpose. |
| Notes in Your Own Words | Take a note that carries the idea without carrying the sentence. |
| Naming Where It Came From | Record a source completely enough that a reader could find it. |
| What the End Mark Tells Your Voice | Read a line the way its end mark says to read it. |
| Reading in Groups, Not One Word at a Time | Group the words in a line the way they belong before you read it aloud. |
| The Word You Lean On | Choose which word to stress, and know what stressing it tells a listener. |
| The Shape of the Whole | Name how a narrative is arranged, separately from what happens in it. |
| Story Time and Telling Time | Separate the order events happened in from the order the text reveals them. |
| Where the Story Turns | Find the hinge - the point after which the same events mean something else. |
| Scene, Summary, and the Skipped Year | Read the ratio between page time and story time as a statement of emphasis. |
| What the Structure Withholds | Treat a missing piece as a shaped choice rather than an accident. |
| Strands Set Against Each Other | Read the seam between two strands, where the writer has left the connection out. |
| How an Ending Works | Judge an ending by what it does to the text behind it, not by what it settles. |
| Attacking the Arguer | Separate an attack on the person from a fair reason to check their evidence. |
| The Position Nobody Took | Tell a reply that answers the stated position from one that answers an invented version of it. |
| The Word That Changed Sides | Track a key word through an argument and catch it changing meaning partway. |
| The Question the Sources Are Arguing About | State the proposition a set of sources is actually at issue over, and what each one is answering. |
| Who Made This, and What Were They Rewarded For | Judge a source by its expertise, its incentives and what it discloses - without treating an interest as a verdict. |
| The Frame Around the Facts | Analyze how headline, emphasis, order and image shape a reader's conclusion without any sentence being false. |
| Numbers That Are True and Misleading | Interrogate a statistic for its denominator, its base rate, its measurement and how its sample was drawn. |
| The Analytical Thesis | Write a thesis that claims how a text works, not what it contains. |
| From Choice to Effect | Say what a rhetorical choice does, not merely that it was made. |
| Summary Is Not Analysis | Tell the difference between retelling a source and claiming something about it. |
| Whose Words Are on the Page | Track how close the narration stands to a character, and catch the moments it borrows that character's own language. |
| The Image Instead of the Statement | Put a thing in front of the reader's senses instead of naming the feeling you want them to have. |
| Where the Line Breaks | Tell an end-stopped line from an enjambed one, and see what a break does to the words on either side of it. |
| Built for the Ear | Explain what a spoken argument does differently because a listener cannot go back. |
| Which Groups of Words Can Stand Alone | Tell a phrase from a clause, and a clause that stands alone from one that cannot. |
| What a Phrase Is Doing in the Sentence | Say which word a prepositional phrase goes with and what it tells you about it. |
| The Words That Rename a Noun | Find the noun group that renames the noun beside it, and read what its commas mean. |
| Commas That Change Who Is Meant | Read a pair of commas as the signal that a clause is extra rather than necessary. |
| The Word Pairs That Slip Through | Choose between look-alike words using the sentence around them rather than a memorized rhyme. |