64 core topics + 118 prerequisite topics taught as needed · approximately 58 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. |
| 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. |
| The Question the Sources Are Arguing About [H] | State the proposition a set of sources is actually at issue over, and what each one is answering. |
| How One Source Stands to Another [H] | Describe the relation between two sources more precisely than agree or disagree. |
| Comparing Like with Like [H] | Test whether two pieces of evidence are about the same object, population, period and definition before setting them side by side. |
| Real Conflict and Apparent Conflict [H] | Tell a genuine contradiction from two sources measuring different things, and locate where a real one would have to live. |
| Putting a Source to Work [H] | Use a source inside your own argument instead of summarizing it in turn. |
| What a Source Can Be Cited For [H] | Match the claim you make to what the source actually measured. |
| Staking a Position the Sources Support [H] | Write a thesis that is neither a summary of the sources nor a refusal to choose between them. |
| What the Set Cannot Settle [H] | Name the question a source set leaves open and the evidence that would close it. |
| 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. |
| Which Clause the Reader Believes [H] | Put the fact you are asserting in the main clause and the fact you are conceding in the subordinate one. |
| Items That Have to Match [H] | Keep every item in a series - and every half of a not only / but also pair - in the same grammatical form. |
| The Phrase That Grabs the Wrong Subject [H] | Check what an opening phrase actually attaches to, and repair it without changing who did what. |
| What a Limiting Word Limits [H] | Place only, just and even where they belong, and pin a modifier that could belong to either side of it. |
| Adding Detail Without Adding a Sentence [H] | Name and build the four free modifiers: appositive, participial phrase, relative clause and absolute phrase. |
| Semicolon, Colon, Dash [H] | Choose the mark the joint between two clauses actually calls for, and keep a comma-heavy list readable. |
| Active, Passive, and the Missing Actor [H] | Identify the passive, name what it leaves out, and tell when leaving the actor out is the honest choice. |
| Where the Main Clause Falls [H] | Tell a periodic sentence from a cumulative one, and rebuild either into the other without changing what it reports. |
| The 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. |
| The Lede and What It Promises [H] | Read a news lede for the fact it selects and the story it obligates the rest of the piece to deliver. |
| How a News Story Is Stacked [H] | Explain why a news story is ordered by a reader's need rather than by time, and predict what disappears when it is cut. |
| Who Says So [H] | Trace every sentence in a report to what the reporter saw, what a document says, or what a person claimed - and notice when a verb adds a judgment. |
| On the Record, and What Anonymity Costs [H] | Weigh a source by the condition they spoke under, the reason they are unnamed, and what the paper did besides take their word. |
| What a Quotation Is For [H] | Decide when a speaker's exact words earn their space and when a paraphrase serves the reader better. |
| News, Analysis, Editorial, Column [H] | Tell the four kinds of newspaper writing apart from the sentences themselves rather than from the label above them. |
| Balance, Weight and the Manufactured Middle [H] | Separate how much space each side of a story receives from what stands behind each side's claims, and name what the reporting has not settled. |
| Names, Harm and What a Paper Owes Afterward [H] | Judge a newsroom decision by what it costs the person it lands on, what it gives the reader, and whether the paper disclosed that it made a choice. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| What Your Sources Are Really About | State the one question a set of sources is answering, precisely enough to compare them. |
| Where Sources Agree | Find the ground two sources share before you look at where they split. |
| Where Sources Disagree | Locate the exact sentence where two sources stop agreeing. |
| A Fact Fight or a Meaning Fight | Tell whether two sources disagree about what happened or about what it means. |
| What Each Source Chose to Include | Notice what one source puts first, and what another leaves out entirely. |
| Choosing the Source That Can Answer It | Match a question to the source that is actually able to answer it. |
| Building One Answer from Several Sources | Write one sentence that holds everything the sources support and nothing more. |
| What None of the Sources Tells You | Name the question your sources leave open, and what would answer it. |
| The Main Idea of a History Text | Find what a history passage is really about. |
| Evidence in a History Text | Point to the detail that actually proves a claim. |
| Whose Story Is Being Told | Notice whose point of view a history text takes, and who is missing. |
| Reading a Source Like a Historian | Ask who made a source, when, and what they wanted it to do. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Conjunctions That Come in Pairs | Use both...and, either...or, neither...nor, and not only...but also, with matching halves. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Your Own Words, the Same Facts | Restate a source's fact in your own wording without changing it. |
| 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. |
| 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. |