Keentune

Writing curriculum

9 chapters
·
220 concepts
·
free
Everything the adaptive question bank can teach and test in Writing, from foundations through advanced practice. Work through it in order, or start practising and let the questions find your level.
New here? Read the Writing guide
A free 14-minute primer — the mental model, the mistakes beginners make, and what to practise first.
A. Rhetorical situation: purpose, audience, and voice
•
What the piece must accomplish, stated before drafting.
•
What the reader knows, wants, and will resist.
•
Calibrating explanation to the reader's actual background.
•
Why this reader would keep reading past the first line.
•
Where and when the text will be encountered.
•
What form the reader already expects for this situation.
•
Length, medium, format and house style as design inputs.
•
The writer's relation to the material: analytic, advocating, reporting.
•
The consistent personality the prose projects.
•
The role the writer adopts for this audience.
•
Formal, neutral or conversational, chosen and sustained.
•
Credibility built through accuracy, fairness and care.
•
Emotional weight earned through detail, not asserted.
•
Reasoning the reader can follow and check.
•
Framing content around what the reader gets from it.
•
Precise, respectful reference that does not distract.
•
Idiom and reference that may not travel.
•
Screen, print and mobile changing scannability requirements.
•
Headings, white space and lists as reading aids.
•
Alt text, heading order and link text as writing decisions.
•
What to do when the two pull in different directions.
•
Defining in advance what a successful piece would produce.
B. Invention, planning, and drafting
•
Generating material before committing to a structure.
•
Quantity-first generation with judgement deferred.
•
Continuous unedited writing to surface what you actually think.
•
Mapping associations to find the natural groupings.
•
Who, what, when, where, why and how as a coverage check.
•
Moving from a subject to a claim you can actually support.
•
A provisional claim that guides research and can change.
•
Letting evidence shape structure rather than the reverse.
•
A structural plan at the level of claims, not topics.
•
Extracting the actual structure from an existing draft.
•
Writing the skeleton first and filling in later.
•
Separating generation from evaluation to beat the blank page.
•
Lowering the stakes, changing scale, or changing medium.
•
Starting where the material is clearest, not at the top.
•
Marking gaps explicitly instead of stalling on them.
•
Capturing sources so attribution survives to the draft.
•
Combining sources into a claim rather than listing them.
•
Cutting material that does not serve the stated purpose.
•
Fixed sessions producing more finished text than open-ended ones.
•
Deliberate distance before revision improves judgement.
•
Keeping earlier drafts so a cut can be reversed.
•
Dividing sections without fracturing voice.
C. Structure and argument
•
One arguable sentence the whole piece supports.
•
A thesis a reasonable reader could dispute.
•
Where the claim lands, and what deferring it costs.
•
Previewing structure without mechanically listing it.
•
Establish the problem, the stakes, and the claim.
•
An opening that earns attention honestly.
•
Supplying only the context the argument needs.
•
Each paragraph advancing one supporting claim.
•
The assertion, the support, and the link between them.
•
Making explicit why the evidence supports the claim.
•
Choosing evidence by relevance, not by availability.
•
Introducing, quoting, and interpreting rather than dropping.
•
Representing the strongest opposing case accurately.
•
Answering the counterargument rather than restating your own.
•
Granting what is true and showing why it does not decide the case.
•
Bounding a claim so it survives contact with exceptions.
•
Chronological, spatial, causal, comparative, problem-solution.
•
Where the strongest point goes, and why it depends on audience.
•
Each section made possible by the one before it.
•
Headings as a navigable outline, not decoration.
•
Consolidate, extend, and answer the "so what".
•
A conclusion that only repeats has wasted the last position.
•
Stating what follows and what the argument does not cover.
•
Converting agreement into a specific next step.
•
Space allocated in proportion to importance and difficulty.
•
Everything present serves the thesis; anything else is cut.
•
The reader always knows where they are and why.
•
Setup, complication and resolution in non-fiction structure.
D. Paragraphs and coherence
•
The sentence carrying the paragraph's claim.
•
One idea per paragraph, developed to completion.
•
Example, detail, definition, comparison, cause.
•
Length set by the idea, and by scannability of the medium.
•
Deliberate emphasis, not a default habit.
•
Beginning with known information and ending with new.
•
Consistent subjects across sentences creating a through-line.
•
Linking the end of one to the start of the next.
•
Addition, contrast, cause, sequence, exemplification.
•
Furthermore and moreover as substitutes for real linkage.
•
Repeating a key term rather than reaching for a synonym.
•
Synonym-swapping that makes the reader wonder if it changed.
•
Pronouns linking sentences only when the referent is obvious.
•
Matching structure across comparable sections.
•
Varying openings without losing the topic-sentence function.
•
Landing the point rather than trailing off.
•
Two ways to organize a comparison, and when each fits.
•
When a bulleted list beats a sentence, and when it hides logic.
•
Every item in a list sharing grammatical form.
•
Explicit structural cues in long documents.
•
Underlying logical fit vs surface connective tissue.
•
Reading first sentences alone to test the argument's spine.
E. Sentence craft and style
•
Put the doer in the subject and the action in the verb.
•
Carrying meaning in the verb rather than in an adjective pile.
•
Verbs frozen into abstract nouns, and how to unfreeze them.
•
The default for clarity and accountability.
•
When the actor is unknown, irrelevant, or deliberately backgrounded.
•
There is and it is burying the real subject.
•
Alternating length to control pace and emphasis.
•
A short sentence after long ones lands hard.
•
Putting the most important information last.
•
Putting the point first when the reader is skimming.
•
Keeping the subject and its verb close together.
•
Long interruptions forcing the reader to hold the thread.
•
Too much before the main clause exhausts working memory.
•
Main clause first, then accumulating detail.
•
Delaying the main clause for suspense and emphasis.
•
Matching form across coordinated elements.
•
Stress patterns and syllable count shaping how prose sounds.
•
Three-part structures for balance and memorability.
•
Pairing opposites in matched grammatical form.
•
Removing words that add no meaning.
•
First and foremost, each and every, full and complete.
•
Very, really, quite, extremely as noise.
•
Stacked qualifiers dissolving the claim.
•
Chains of "of the" that a possessive or verb would replace.
•
Constructions that add words without adding content.
•
Stating what IS rather than what is not.
•
Moving between concrete detail and general claim deliberately.
•
Specifics that make an abstract claim believable.
•
Evidence that lets the reader draw the conclusion.
•
One controlling metaphor, sustained, not mixed.
•
Figures worn smooth into invisibility.
•
The most reliable test of rhythm and breath.
F. Diction, tone, and plain language
•
The nearest word is not the right word.
•
Preferring the specific noun to the category.
•
Choosing the common word when it does the same work.
•
Technical terms kept only where they buy precision.
•
Glossing a term of art at first use.
•
Spelling out on first use, and cutting the ones used once.
•
Softened wording that obscures the fact the reader needs.
•
Word choice smuggling in a verdict.
•
Prefabricated phrases that stop the reader thinking.
•
Leverage, synergize, operationalize as content-free verbs.
•
Aforesaid, hereinafter and pursuant to outside legal necessity.
•
The reader finds, understands and uses it the first time.
•
Direct address as a plain-language default.
•
Using must for obligation because shall is ambiguous.
•
Stating conditions positively rather than through double negatives.
•
Keeping most sentences short enough to parse on one pass.
•
Splitting compound sentences that carry two obligations.
•
Holding one tone unless a shift is deliberate.
•
When humor builds rapport and when it undercuts authority.
•
Restraint that makes a strong claim stronger.
•
Emphasis earned by the sentence, not by punctuation.
•
Imperative mood for procedures the reader will follow.
•
When to spell out, when to use figures, and rounding honestly.
•
Matching complexity to the audience's reading conditions.
G. Revision, editing, and proofreading
•
Rethinking the argument vs improving the sentences.
•
Fixing structure before polishing prose you may cut.
•
Separate passes for structure, paragraph, sentence and error.
•
Removing what does not serve the purpose, however good.
•
The favorite passage is the one most likely to be self-indulgent.
•
Cutting a fixed share forces real prioritization.
•
Confirming the draft argues what the thesis promises.
•
Every claim supported and every support used.
•
Testing whether each move is signalled and earned.
•
Auditing the argument through topic sentences alone.
•
Reading sentences in reverse order to catch errors.
•
Hearing dropped words the eye supplies.
•
Time away as the cheapest quality improvement.
•
Feedback on the piece's own goals, not the reviewer's taste.
•
Separating the diagnosis from the prescribed fix.
•
Which notes to take, which to note, which to decline.
•
Consistency where the choice is arbitrary.
•
Terms, capitalization, numerals and formatting held constant.
•
Verifying every number, name, date and quotation.
•
Reproducing wording exactly and marking every alteration.
•
Confirming every citation resolves to what it claims.
•
Slow, targeted passes for one error class at a time.
•
Real-word errors that automated tools do not catch.
•
Headings, spacing, captions and metadata before delivery.
H. Genres and forms
•
Explaining a subject without arguing a position.
•
Defending a contestable claim with evidence.
•
Taking a text or phenomenon apart to show how it works.
•
Story structure applied to true material.
•
Sensory detail organized by a dominant impression.
•
Synthesizing prior work into a map, not a list.
•
Standard sections and their fixed obligations.
•
Standalone summary carrying findings and recommendation.
•
Purpose in the first line, action items at the end.
•
Subject line, single ask, and scannable structure.
•
Problem, approach, cost, and evidence of capability.
•
Numbered imperative steps with prerequisites and warnings.
•
Task-oriented writing organized by what the reader wants to do.
•
Inverted pyramid with the news in the first sentence.
•
Lead, nut graf, and descending order of importance.
•
Delayed lead and narrative structure in journalism.
•
A single argument, a clear stake, and a tight word count.
•
Description, evaluation, and the criteria made explicit.
•
Evidence-backed self-presentation against stated criteria.
•
Matching demonstrated capability to a named requirement.
•
Aligning a project with a funder's published priorities.
•
Front-loaded, chunked, scannable prose for screen reading.
•
Extreme compression without losing the claim.
•
Literary technique bound by factual obligation.
I. Research, evidence, and citation
•
A question narrow enough to answer and wide enough to matter.
•
Original material vs commentary on it.
•
Peer-reviewed work vs general-audience reporting.
•
Authority, accuracy, currency, purpose and coverage.
•
Checking a source against what others say about it.
•
Keywords, operators and controlled vocabulary.
•
Extracting claim, method and limitation from a source.
•
Summary plus evaluation plus relevance for each source.
•
Recording where every fact came from as you take it.
•
Using exact wording when the wording itself matters.
•
Restating in genuinely new sentence structure, still cited.
•
Compressing a source's argument to its load-bearing claims.
•
Near-copying with synonyms — a plagiarism risk, not a paraphrase.
•
Introducing a source and framing its authority.
•
Grammatically joining a quotation to your own sentence.
•
When length triggers indentation and drops quotation marks.
•
Marking omission and insertion inside a quotation.
•
Locating the source at the point of use.
•
Works cited vs works consulted.
•
What MLA, APA and Chicago each prioritize.
•
Verbatim, mosaic, self-plagiarism and uncited paraphrase.
•
Crediting tables, charts and images like text.
Keentune is not affiliated with or endorsed by the organizations whose documentation informs these maps.
All about Writing practice
Also on your phone
App StoreGoogle Play
All exam, test, and product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification and reference only. Keentune is independent study practice — not affiliated with, authorized, or endorsed by any of these organizations.
© 2026 SportaApp LLC