Language
How English works, how to use it clearly, and how to recognise what writers are doing when they use it well. Grammar is the machinery. Writing is the craft. Literature is the art that results when craft meets purpose.
Units
Three tiers per unit. Beginner for the core idea. Intermediate for the formal rule with exercises. Master for the linguistic theory underneath.
22.01.01— Nouns shipped22.01.02— Verbs shipped22.01.03— Sentences: subject and predicate shipped22.01.04— Pronouns shipped22.01.05— Adjectives shipped22.01.06— Adverbs shipped22.01.07— Prepositions shipped22.01.08— Conjunctions shipped22.01.09— Interjections shipped22.01.10— Noun phrases and verb phrases shipped22.01.11— Subject-verb agreement shipped22.01.12— Verb tense: present, past, future shipped22.01.13— Perfect and progressive aspects shipped22.01.14— Active and passive voice shipped22.01.15— Clauses: independent and dependent shipped22.01.16— Compound and complex sentences shipped22.01.17— Relative clauses shipped22.01.18— Punctuation: end marks and commas shipped22.01.19— Punctuation: semicolons, colons, dashes shipped22.01.20— Apostrophes and quotation marks shipped22.01.21— Common errors: fragments, run-ons, dangling modifiers shipped22.01.22— Parallel structure shipped22.01.23— Pronoun case and reference shipped22.01.24— Capitalization conventions shipped22.02.01— Writing a clear sentence shipped22.02.02— Paragraph structure shipped22.02.03— Transitions and flow shipped22.02.04— Thesis statement shipped22.02.05— Structuring an argument shipped22.02.06— Using evidence shipped22.02.07— Counterargument and rebuttal shipped22.02.08— Introduction and conclusion shipped22.02.09— Citation and attribution shipped22.02.10— Revision and editing shipped22.02.11— Style and voice shipped22.03.01— Literal vs Figurative Language shipped22.03.02— Metaphor and Simile shipped22.03.03— Symbolism and Allegory shipped22.03.04— Irony shipped22.03.05— Foreshadowing and Suspense shipped22.03.06— Point of View shipped22.03.07— Tone and Mood shipped22.03.08— Theme shipped22.03.09— Motif and Repetition shipped22.03.10— Unreliable Narration shipped22.03.11— Satire and Parody shipped22.03.12— Imagery and Sensory Detail shipped22.03.13— Allusion shipped22.03.14— Personification shipped22.03.15— Hyperbole and Understatement shipped22.04.01— Reading guide: The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger) shipped22.04.02— Reading guide: The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) shipped22.04.03— Reading guide: The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) shipped22.04.04— Reading guide: Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell) shipped
Reading guides
Not "here's what it means." Instead: things to notice, questions to ask, what critics have argued. The reader brings their own reading.
- Guide 1. Homer, The Odyssey — A man tries to go home. It takes him ten years. Everyone he meets is either trying to kill him, marry him, or both.
- Guide 2. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex — A king tries to escape a prophecy. Every step he takes to avoid it brings him closer. The question is not just why he fails -- it's whether failure was ever optional.
- Guide 3. Dante, Inferno — A poet walks through Hell and finds it organized, bureaucratic, and full of people he knew personally. Revenge fantasy, theological map, or both?
- Guide 4. Shakespeare, Hamlet — A prince is told to kill his uncle. He thinks about it for five acts. Whether that makes him wise, cowardly, or something else entirely depends on which critic you ask.
- Guide 5. Shakespeare, Macbeth — A man hears a prophecy and murders his way to the top. The prophecy didn't tell him to do that. Or did it?
- Guide 6. Austen, Pride and Prejudice — Two people dislike each other for three hundred pages. Then they don't. Whether this is a love story, a social critique, or an economic transaction is still being debated.
- Guide 7. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities — It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Whether it was either depends on whether you were an aristocrat or a starving peasant -- and which side of the English Channel you were on.
- Guide 8. Shelley, Frankenstein — A scientist builds a creature. The creature learns to speak, read, and feel. Then it kills everyone the scientist loves. Who is the monster? The question has never been settled.
- Guide 9. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — A boy and a runaway slave float down the Mississippi River. It's been called the Great American Novel and it's been banned from schools, sometimes for the same passage.
- Guide 10. George Orwell, 1984 — Big Brother is watching. The Thought Police are listening. History is being rewritten. Orwell wrote it as a warning about Stalinism. Readers since have applied it to everything from advertising to social media.
- Guide 11. George Orwell, Animal Farm — The animals overthrow the farmer. Then the pigs become the farmers. Orwell said it was about Stalin. The pattern it describes has outlasted Stalin by seven decades and counting.
- Guide 12. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird — A lawyer defends a Black man accused of raping a white woman in 1930s Alabama. His daughter narrates the story. Whether the novel is a critique of racism or a story about white heroism depends on who's reading it.
- Guide 13. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart — Okonkwo is a strong man in a strong village. Then the missionaries arrive. Achebe wrote it as an answer to Western novels about Africa. Whether it answers them or complicates them further is part of the novel's power.
- Guide 14. William Golding, Lord of the Flies — A group of English schoolboys are stranded on an island. They try to build a society. It goes badly. Whether this proves that humans are naturally violent, or that English boarding schools produce damaged children, is an open question.
- Guide 15. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 — In the future, firemen don't put out fires -- they start them. Their target is books. Bradbury said it was about television destroying interest in reading. Readers since have found their own fears reflected in it.
- Guide 16. Toni Morrison, Beloved — A formerly enslaved woman is haunted. The ghost in her house has a name, a history, and a claim on her that no one else can understand. Morrison's novel refuses to let the reader look away from what slavery actually did to people.
Three strands
Grammar (section 22.01) — parts of speech, sentence structure, agreement, punctuation, clauses. Every unit is testable: identify the noun, fix the comma splice, diagram the sentence.
Writing (section 22.02) — clear sentences, paragraph structure, thesis construction, evidence, counterargument, revision. Builds on grammar prerequisites.
Literature techniques (section 22.03) — metaphor, symbolism, irony, point of view, theme, unreliable narration. The toolkit for reading literature attentively. Builds on grammar and writing.