English · Year 8

Lesson 1

Explore the conventions of mystery, fantasy, science fiction and realism, and how writers meet or subvert what readers expect.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 2

Learn to spot the clues that a narrator can't be trusted and explain how that changes the way you read a story.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 3

Analyse how in medias res openings, frame narratives and parallel timelines rearrange time to hook and hold readers.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 4

Distinguish between telling and revealing character, and analyse speech, thoughts, actions, effect on others and looks.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 5

Identify participle and infinitive clauses and use them to combine ideas concisely — without leaving any participles dangling.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 6

Master new-speaker paragraphs, split quotations, dialogue tags, action beats and speeches that run across paragraphs.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 7

Use repetition, synonyms, word chains and collocation to weave a text together through vocabulary.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 8

Discover how English keeps growing through compounding, blending, clipping, acronyms and borrowing.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 9

Explain how the time, place and culture of both writer and reader shape what a text means.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 10

Infer the unstated feelings, motives and tensions that lie beneath what characters say to each other.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 11

Plant clues and misdirection so your story's ending is surprising yet completely believable.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 12

Give feedback on a sample draft that is specific, linked to criteria, actionable and respectful.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 13

Take apart the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet to see how fourteen tightly patterned lines build an argument and then turn it.

⏱ 20 min · 9 questions

Lesson 14

Go beyond metaphor to explore how writers let a part stand for a whole, or a related thing stand for an idea.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 15

Read song lyrics closely — their refrains, rhymes and images — and weigh up whether they deserve a place beside poetry.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 16

Explore how First Nations Australian poets and songwriters express connection to Country, identity and resilience, and the histories their work responds to.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 17

Discover why poets rearrange normal word order and how inversion creates emphasis, rhyme and rhythm.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 18

Spot the families of related words writers weave through a text and explain how they build mood and meaning.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 19

Learn how commas, dashes and full stops inside a line create pauses that slow, shock or emphasise.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 20

See how the shape, spacing and typography of a poem on the page become part of its meaning.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 21

Compare how two poems about the same subject use different techniques to create very different meanings.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 22

Build a systematic annotation method so your notes identify techniques, explain effects and prepare you to write.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 23

Write a tightly structured analytical paragraph that shows how a poet's technique conveys an idea.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 24

Explore how spoken word poets use repetition, rhythm and direct address, then plan a short piece of your own.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 25

Discover how satirists use exaggeration, irony and imitation to make readers laugh at something — and then question it.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 26

Examine how stories, films and news coverage construct images of teenagers — and whether those images reinforce or challenge stereotypes.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 27

Investigate what is kept, cut and changed when a story travels from the page to the stage, the cinema or the streaming screen.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 28

Trace how writers have built, celebrated and challenged ideas of what it means to be ‘Australian’ from the 1890s to today.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 29

Use the appraisal framework to sort evaluative language into affect, judgement and appreciation — and see how it quietly positions you.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 30

See how the passive voice and agent deletion can shift attention away from who did what — and why that matters in the news.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 31

Read film and photographs like a director by analysing how shot size, angle and viewpoint position the audience.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 32

Take apart feature articles to see how headlines, standfirsts, hooks, body sections and endings draw readers in and keep them reading.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 33

Find out why some events make the front page and others vanish, by learning the news values editors use to choose stories.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 34

Learn the fact-checker's process for testing statistics and claims against multiple reliable sources before you believe or share them.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 35

Spot the flawed reasoning behind persuasive-sounding arguments, from straw men and personal attacks to false choices and bandwagons.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 36

Plan and craft an opinion piece with a hook that grabs, a stance that's clear, evidence that convinces and a close that sticks.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 37

Learn how acts, scenes, dialogue, stage directions and asides work together to turn words on a page into a performance.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 38

Step into Elizabethan London to see how Shakespeare's life, his theatre and his rowdy audiences shaped the plays he wrote.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 39

Crack the code of thee, thou, wherefore and upside-down word order so you can paraphrase Shakespeare's lines with confidence.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 40

Tell a soliloquy from a monologue and an aside, and explain what each lets an audience learn about a character.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 41

Trace English from the Old English of the Anglo-Saxons to the Australian English you speak today, through invasions, printing presses and shifting meanings.

⏱ 20 min · 9 questions

Lesson 42

See how forms of address, politeness strategies and register quietly signal who holds power in a conversation.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 43

Compare the messy brilliance of everyday speech with the tight, dense structure of writing, and learn to measure lexical density.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 44

Master the layout rules of playscripts — character names, colons, parenthetical directions and scene headings — so your scripts read like the real thing.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 45

Read like a director — use stage directions and dialogue cues to picture the action and uncover what characters are not saying.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 46

Build a tight dramatic scene with a clear conflict, dialogue that sounds like real people and stage directions that earn their place.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions

Lesson 47

Use your voice, body and eye contact to lift a speech off the page and hold an audience's attention from first word to last.

⏱ 18 min · 8 questions

Lesson 48

Write a sharp, balanced theatre review that judges acting, staging and interpretation with precise evidence.

⏱ 20 min · 8 questions