Units
All 7 units of English Language Arts 8. Each one has a concepts page to learn from, practice questions marked as you go, and quizzes built at random.
Unit 1
Unit 1: Reading closely
The main idea of a whole passage and a summary that covers all of it, what a writer shows without ever saying, and idioms, analogies and new words worked out from the sentences around them. Every answer comes back to the passage.
Unit 2
Unit 2: Character, conflict and plot
Why characters do what they do, how and why they change, the conflicts that drive a plot, and what two stories share when you set them side by side. What a character says and what a character does are not always the same thing.
Unit 3
Unit 3: Mood, tone and theme
How word choice, setting and figurative language create a mood, how tone shows a writer's attitude, and what hyperbole is for. A theme is a statement about life, not a one-word topic, and the questions here show the difference.
Unit 4
Unit 4: Point of view, media and argument
What a first-person narrator can and cannot know, how videos and ads use camera angles, framing and music to shape what you feel, and how to follow an argument from its claim to its reasons and evidence.
Unit 5
Unit 5: Sentences and conventions
Simple, compound and complex sentences, pronouns that match the words they replace, verb tenses that stay put, and the semicolons, dashes, hyphens and parentheses most writers guess at. Every question puts the rule inside a sentence, where the mistakes actually happen.
Unit 6
Unit 6: Research and organization
Choosing sources that are useful, current and reliable for the question you are asking, taking notes in point form, paraphrasing instead of copying, giving credit, and organizing what you find by comparison, time order or cause and effect.
Studying for the exam?
Mix every unit together
Build a random quiz drawn from all 84 questions across every unit, at the level you choose. It is the closest thing here to a real exam.