English for Year 7

🔎 Reading closely Finding information, inference and using quotations

Good readers are detectives. They find facts fast, spot the clues a writer leaves between the lines, and prove every idea with the writer's own words. In this chapter you practise the reading skills you will use in every English lesson from now to GCSE: finding information, inference, using quotations, explaining a…

Practice: Chapter test: reading closely · Reading closely: key words

• 📌 Finding information Skimming, scanning and picking out facts

  Nobody reads a bus timetable from top to bottom: your eyes jump straight to your stop and the time. Finding information in a text works the same way. Retrieval means finding facts that a text states clearly, and finding them quickly and accurately.

  Practice: Finding information

• 🕵️ Inference Reading between the lines

  When a friend walks in, slams the door and throws their bag on the floor, nobody needs to tell you they are angry. You work it out from the clues. That is inference: working out what a text suggests without saying it. Writers leave clues on purpose, and good readers notice them.

  Practice: Inference

• 💬 Using quotations Short quotes that prove your point

  Tell your teacher ‘the captain is dangerous’ and they will ask: how do you know? In English, the proof is a quotation: words copied exactly from the text and put in quotation marks. The best quotations are short, exact and chosen to prove one point.

  Practice: Using quotations

• ✍️ Explaining a writer's choices Point, evidence, explanation: What, How, Why

  Saying ‘the description is good’ is easy. The real skill is explaining what the writer shows, how they do it (the exact words and methods) and why (the effect on the reader). That is called analysis, and you write it in clear, well-built paragraphs.

  Practice: Explaining a writer’s choices

• 📝 Summarising The main points in a few words

  When a friend asks what a film was about, you don't retell every scene. You give the main points in a few sentences. That is a summary: the main points of a text, in your own words, much shorter than the original. Being able to summarise is also the best test of whether you have really understood what you read.

  Practice: Summarising

🧱 Grammar: words and sentences Word classes, tenses, clauses and sentence types

Grammar is how words fit together to make meaning. Knowing the names of the parts (nouns, verbs, clauses and the rest) lets you talk precisely about how a writer builds a sentence, and lets you build better ones yourself. In this chapter you sort words into their classes, then learn to control tenses, clauses and…

Practice: Chapter test: grammar · Grammar: key words

• 🏷️ Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs The main word classes

  In a football team every player has a job: goalkeeper, defender, striker. Words in a sentence have jobs too, and a word's job is called its word class. Know the jobs and you can explain how any sentence works, and why a writer chose one word and not another.

  Practice: Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs

• 🔗 Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and determiners The small words that hold sentences together

  Take the little words out of ‘The cat sat on the mat’ and you are left with ‘Cat sat mat’. Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and determiners are short, but they hold sentences together: they tell you who, where, which one, and how ideas link.

  Practice: Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and determiners

• ⏳ Verb tenses Past, present and future, and keeping them consistent

  ‘I walk’, ‘I walked’, ‘I will walk’: the verb tells you when something happens. The form of a verb that shows time is its tense. Choosing the right tense, and sticking to it, keeps your writing clear for the reader.

  Practice: Verb tenses

• 🧩 Clauses and sentence types Simple, compound and complex sentences

  Sentences are built like walls, from bricks called clauses. A short sentence can be a single brick; a longer one is several bricks joined together. How you join them changes what your sentence means and which idea seems most important.

  Practice: Clauses and sentence types

• 🎛️ Varying your sentences Openings, lengths and types for effect

  Read ten sentences that all start with ‘He’ and are all the same length, and you'll soon be yawning. Good writers vary how their sentences open, how long they are and what type they are. That is how they control the pace, and make the important moments hit hard.

  Practice: Varying your sentences

❗ Punctuation From full stops to semicolons

Punctuation marks are the road signs of writing: they tell the reader when to stop, when to pause, when to ask and when to shout. Put one in the wrong place and the meaning changes: “Let’s eat, Grandma!” is an invitation to dinner, but “Let’s eat Grandma!” is a very different meal. This chapter takes you from full…

Practice: Chapter test: punctuation · Punctuation: key words

• ⏺️ Ending sentences and capital letters Full stops, question marks, exclamation marks

  Try reading this aloud: the dog barked the postman ran the gate slammed. Without punctuation you can’t tell where one idea ends and the next begins. Every sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark, so the reader always knows where they are.

  Practice: Ending sentences and capital letters

• 〰️ Commas Lists, clauses and avoiding the comma splice

  A comma is a small mark that asks the reader to pause for a moment. It keeps the items in a list apart, marks off the start of a sentence and wraps extra information. Used in the wrong place, it glues together two sentences that should stand apart: the comma splice, one of the most common mistakes in Year 7 writing.

  Practice: Commas

• ✏️ Apostrophes Missing letters and belonging

  The apostrophe is the most misused mark in English: you can spot it in the wrong place on shop signs everywhere (“Fresh apple’s!”, “Pizza’s £5!”). Yet it has only two jobs: to show where letters are missing, and to show that something belongs to someone. Learn the two jobs and you will always know whether you need one.

  Practice: Apostrophes

• 💬 Speech marks and dialogue Setting out what characters say

  Dialogue brings characters to life: we hear them argue, joke and whisper. Setting it out on the page has a few firm rules. Readers expect them, and when you follow them nobody gets lost in a conversation, even one between five people.

  Practice: Speech marks and dialogue

• 🪄 Colons, semicolons, dashes and brackets Punctuation that adds power

  These are the power tools of punctuation. A colon makes the reader wait for what comes next, a semicolon balances two linked ideas, a dash adds drama and brackets whisper a quick aside. Used well, and not too often, they make your writing sound confident and controlled.

  Practice: Colons, semicolons, dashes and brackets

🔠 Spelling and vocabulary Homophones, prefixes, suffixes and precise words

English spelling has a reputation for being tricky, and some of it is: though, through and tough look alike but sound nothing alike. But most words follow patterns, and many are built from parts that carry meaning, so learning the parts helps you spell, and understand, thousands of words. This chapter also helps you…

Practice: Chapter test: spelling and vocabulary · Spelling and vocabulary: key words

• 👯 Homophones There, their, they're and other sound-alikes

  Homophones are words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings, like there, their and they’re. (The name is Greek: homo means “same” and phone means “sound”.) A spellchecker won’t save you, because each spelling is a real word: you have to know which one means what.

  Practice: Homophones

• 🧷 Prefixes and suffixes Adding to the start and end of words

  Many long words are short words wearing extras. Unhelpful is help with un- at the front and -ful at the end. Learn what these parts mean, and the rules for joining them on, and you can spell and understand words you have never seen before.

  Practice: Prefixes and suffixes

• 📚 Plurals and spelling rules From cats to knives to children

  One cat, two cats: most plurals just add s. But one box makes two boxes, one baby two babies, one knife two knives, and one mouse makes two mice. A handful of rules covers nearly every word; the few rebels you simply learn.

  Practice: Plurals and spelling rules

• 🌱 Word roots Greek and Latin parts that unlock meanings

  Words have family trees. Photograph, autograph and paragraph are relatives: each contains graph, from a Greek word meaning “to write” or “to draw”. Learn a few Greek and Latin roots and you can work out what new words mean, and spell them with confidence.

  Practice: Word roots

• 🎯 Choosing precise words Synonyms, shades of meaning and formal words

  Was the dog big, or was it huge, hulking or gigantic? Each word paints a slightly different picture. Good writers don’t settle for a word that is nearly right; they choose the one that is exactly right for the meaning, the mood and the reader.

  Practice: Choosing precise words

🎨 Language techniques Similes, metaphors, personification and sound

Writers don't just tell you what happened: they choose words that make you see it, hear it and feel it. A storm can "rage", a classroom can be "a zoo", and one "CRASH!" can make you jump. In this chapter you will learn the main language techniques, how to spot them, how to explain their effect on the reader, and how…

Practice: Chapter test: language techniques · Language techniques: key words

• 🦁 Similes and metaphors Comparisons with and without like or as

  If you say your friend ran "like a cheetah", nobody pictures spots and a tail: they picture speed. A comparison packs a whole picture into a few words. A simile compares one thing with another using like or as; a metaphor says one thing is another.

  Practice: Similes and metaphors

• 🌬️ Personification Giving human qualities to things

  Have you ever said your phone "died" or that the printer "hates" you? Then you have used personification. Writers give human actions, feelings and qualities to things that are not human, such as the weather, objects and places, to bring them to life and to set a mood.

  Practice: Personification

• 🔔 Sound techniques Alliteration, onomatopoeia, sibilance and rhyme

  Say "Crash! The plate shattered on the floor" out loud and you can almost hear it. Writers choose words for their sound as well as their meaning, especially in poems, which are written to be heard. Sound techniques make words memorable and help to build a mood: soft and soothing, or harsh and violent.

  Practice: Sound techniques

• 👃 Imagery and the senses Making the reader see, hear, smell, taste and feel

  Think of fish and chips on a cold evening by the sea. You can probably smell the vinegar and feel the hot paper warming your hands. That is the power of imagery: words that create pictures, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings in the reader's mind, so a scene feels real.

  Practice: Imagery and the senses

• 📢 Repetition, lists and exaggeration Hyperbole, the rule of three and pathetic fallacy

  "I've told you a million times!" Nobody has counted, but everyone gets the point. Writers repeat words, pile up lists and exaggerate on purpose, to stress an idea, build up a feeling and make their words stick. They can even make the weather match a character's mood.

  Practice: Repetition, lists and exaggeration

🖼️ Descriptive writing Painting a picture with words

A good description lets the reader step inside a place: they see the light, hear the noises, smell the air and feel the mood, without leaving their chair. In this chapter you will learn to show rather than tell, to use all five senses, to move the reader's eye like a film camera, to build a mood from cosy to eerie…

Practice: Chapter test: descriptive writing · Descriptive writing: key words

• 🎬 Show, don't tell Let the reader work it out

  Compare "Maya was nervous" with "Maya chewed the end of her pencil and kept glancing at the clock." The second sentence never says "nervous", yet you know exactly how she feels, and you can picture her. That is show, don't tell: give the reader clues and let them work it out.

  Practice: Show, don't tell

• 👂 Writing with all five senses Beyond what things look like

  Most descriptions only tell you what things look like. But a bakery is the smell of warm bread, a swimming pool is the echo of shrieks and the sting of chlorine, a beach is gritty sand between your toes. Use all five senses and the reader stops reading about a place and starts being there.

  Practice: Writing with all five senses

• 🔭 Structuring a description Zooming in and out like a camera

  A film never shows everything at once. The camera starts wide, moves closer, lingers on one detail, then pulls back. A description can be built the same way, so the reader always knows where to look and every paragraph shows something new.

  Practice: Structuring a description

• 🏙️ Describing settings Places that create a mood, from cosy to dystopian

  The same street can feel cosy on a snowy Christmas Eve and terrifying at three in the morning. A setting is where and when a story happens, and the words you choose decide how it feels: its atmosphere, or mood. Writers build settings that are cosy, eerie, or even dystopian.

  Practice: Describing settings

• 🛠️ Crafting and improving a description Sentences, vocabulary and editing for effect

  Writers rarely get it right first time. They write a draft, then reread it and make it better: a sharper word here, a shorter sentence there, a full stop moved for effect. This topic is your toolkit for turning a first draft into a description that grips.

  Practice: Crafting and improving a description

📖 Writing stories Plot, characters, openings and narrative voice

Every story you love, from a fairy tale to a film, is built from the same parts: a shape that rises to a climax, characters we care about, an opening that hooks us, a voice that tells it and an ending that stays with us. In this chapter you will learn how writers build each part, and plan, draft and improve a story of…

Practice: Chapter test: writing stories · Writing stories: key words

• ⛰️ Story structure Exposition, rising action, climax and resolution

  Almost every story follows the same shape: things start calm, a problem makes them harder and harder, everything comes to a head, then it all settles down. Planning your story on this shape, the story mountain, stops it from wandering about or ending too suddenly.

  Practice: Story structure

• 🧑‍🎤 Creating characters Showing who a character is

  Think of a character you love from a book or a film. You probably remember how they talk, what they want and one or two striking details, not a list of their eye colour, hair colour and height. Good characters feel like real people: they want things, they fear things, and they show who they are through what they do…

  Practice: Creating characters

• 🪝 Openings and hooks Grab the reader from the first line

  Readers decide within a few lines whether to keep reading. A strong first sentence is a hook: it grabs the reader's attention and makes them ask a question they want answered. Who is this? What happened? Why?

  Practice: Openings and hooks

• 🗣️ Narrative voice First person or third person

  Who is telling the story? It can be told by a character inside it, who says "I", or by a narrator outside it, who says "she", "he" or "they". This choice, the narrative voice or point of view, changes what the reader knows and how close they feel to the characters.

  Practice: Narrative voice

• 🌀 Endings and twists Satisfying, surprising and cliffhanger endings

  The ending is the last thing a reader remembers. A good ending answers the story's big question, feels earned, and often echoes the beginning. A weak one, such as "and then I woke up and it was all a dream", can spoil everything that came before it.

  Practice: Endings and twists

📣 Persuasive writing and speaking Fact, opinion, persuasion, letters, articles and speeches

Every day someone tries to change your mind: an advert for trainers, a charity poster, a friend who wants to watch a different film. In this chapter you will learn to tell facts from opinions, spot the tools persuaders use, write letters and articles for a real audience, give a speech that makes people listen, and…

Practice: Chapter test: persuasive writing and speaking · Persuasive writing and speaking: key words

• ⚖️ Fact and opinion What can be proved and what is a view

  "The new film is two hours long." "The new film is brilliant." Both sentences sound certain, but only one of them can be checked with a clock. A fact can be proved; an opinion is what someone thinks or feels. Adverts, articles and speeches mix the two, so a careful reader has to tell them apart.

  Practice: Fact and opinion

• 📣 Persuasive techniques AFOREST: the tools of persuasion

  Why does an advert say "Don't miss out!" and a charity poster show a shivering puppy? Persuasive writing tries to make you think, feel or do something. Writers use a toolkit of techniques, and the word AFOREST helps you remember seven of the most useful ones.

  Practice: Persuasive techniques

• ✉️ Letters and articles Form, audience and purpose

  A text to a friend, a letter to your headteacher and an article in the school newsletter could all be about the same thing, yet they look and sound completely different. Before you write anything, ask three questions: what form is it, who is my audience, and what is my purpose?

  Practice: Letters and articles

• 🎤 Speeches and rhetoric Ethos, pathos and logos

  More than 2,300 years ago, the Greek thinker Aristotle studied how speakers win over a crowd. He found three kinds of appeal, and speech writers still use them today, from world leaders to a Year 7 pupil standing for the school council. A speech is written to be heard, so it also has to be performed well.

  Practice: Speeches and rhetoric

• 🤝 Discussion and debate Listening, building on ideas and disagreeing well

  A good discussion is not a battle to win. People listen, build on each other's ideas and disagree politely, so that the group ends up thinking better together than any one person could alone. A debate is more formal: two sides argue for and against an idea, and the audience decides.

  Practice: Discussion and debate

🪶 Poetry Form, rhyme, rhythm and poems about place and nature

A poem can be four lines long and still stay with you for life. Poets choose every word for its sound as well as its meaning, and shape their lines on the page on purpose. In this chapter you will learn what makes a poem, meet the main forms from haiku to sonnet, read famous poems about nature, cities and home, and…

Practice: Chapter test: poetry · Poetry: key words

• 📜 What makes a poem Lines, stanzas, rhyme and rhythm

  You can tell a poem from a story before you read a single word: short lines, white space, lines gathered into groups. In a poem, the poet decides where every line stops, which words rhyme and where the beat falls. Lines, stanzas, rhyme and rhythm are the building blocks of every poem.

  Practice: What makes a poem

• 🧩 Poetic forms Haiku, limerick, ballad and sonnet

  Some poems follow a set of rules called a form: a fixed number of lines, a rhyme scheme or a pattern of syllables. Like the rules of a sport, the rules don't spoil the game; they make it a challenge, and readers enjoy seeing a poet play it well.

  Practice: Poetic forms

• 🌼 Poems about nature Wordsworth, Rossetti and Tennyson

  Long before photographs, poets caught sunsets, storms and animals in words. Around 1800, a group of poets now called the Romantics, among them William Wordsworth, believed that nature could teach people and even heal them, just as more and more people were moving to smoky towns and factories. Nature poems still make…

  Practice: Poems about nature

• 🏡 Poems about place and home Blake's London and other places

  A place can make you feel safe, excited or trapped. When poets write about a place, they show us how it feels to them, so two poets can describe the same city and give completely different pictures. Here are two poems about London, written only eight years apart, and a poem about the love of home.

  Practice: Poems about place and home

• 🖋️ Writing about a poem What, how and why in a poem

  "How does the poet present the tiger?" A good answer is not a list of techniques. It explains what the poem shows, how the poet does it (the exact words and methods) and why: the effect on the reader. Here is a way to do it with any poem, shown on William Blake's The Tyger.

  Practice: Writing about a poem

🐉 Myths and legends Greek myths, British legends and heroes

Long before there were books, people sat round fires and told stories: of gods who hurled thunderbolts, of a monster at the heart of a maze, of a boy who flew too close to the sun. Those stories are still told today, and they hide in words we use every day. In this chapter you meet the Greek myths of Pandora, Theseus…

Practice: Chapter test: myths and legends · Myths and legends: key words

• 🏺 What myths and legends are Stories that explain the world, and stories of heroes

  Why does thunder crash? Why do the leaves fall every autumn? Today a scientist can answer. Three thousand years ago people answered with stories: an angry god, a goddess in mourning. Those stories are myths. Stories about great heroes of the past, like King Arthur, are legends.

  Practice: What myths and legends are

• 🏛️ Greek myths Pandora, Theseus and Icarus

  The Ancient Greeks told these three stories nearly 3,000 years ago, and we still use them: we warn that something will "open Pandora's box", and we say someone "flew too close to the sun". Each myth is gripping, and each one teaches a lesson.

  Practice: Greek myths

• 🗡️ Heroes and the hero's journey The pattern behind hero stories

  What do Theseus, Beowulf and the hero of your favourite film have in common? More than you might think. Someone ordinary is called away from home, gets help, faces a terrible test and comes back changed. Storytellers all over the world have used this pattern for thousands of years.

  Practice: Heroes and the hero's journey

• 🏰 British legends Beowulf, King Arthur and Robin Hood

  Britain has legends of its own: a warrior who tore the arm off a monster, a boy who pulled a sword from a stone and became king, and an outlaw in a green hood who robbed the rich. Nobody knows how much of them is true, and that is part of their magic.

  Practice: British legends

• ✨ Writing your own myth Gods, monsters and a lesson to learn

  Now you are the storyteller. Every culture has myths that answer questions like "Why is the sea salty?" or "Why does the moon change shape?" You can write one too: choose a question, invent the gods or the hero, set a test, and end with the answer.

  Practice: Writing your own myth

🔍 Detective stories: Sherlock Holmes Conan Doyle, Victorian London and the art of deduction

A young woman arrives at dawn, shaking with fear. Her twin sister died behind a locked door, crying out about "the speckled band", and now she has heard the same whistle in the night. Only one man can help: Sherlock Holmes. In this chapter you meet Arthur Conan Doyle's great detective and his friend Dr Watson in the…

Practice: Chapter test: detective stories · Detective stories: key words

• 🎩 Conan Doyle and Victorian London Gaslight, fog and the first great detective

  Picture a London street in 1892: horses' hooves on the cobbles, gas lamps glowing through a yellow fog, crowds rushing to the new trains, and newspapers full of crimes. This is the world of Sherlock Holmes, and the readers of the time lived in it too. Knowing it helps you understand why they loved him.

  Practice: Conan Doyle and Victorian London

• 🕵️ Holmes and Watson The detective and his storyteller

  Every great detective needs someone to tell the story. Sherlock Holmes notices everything and explains almost nothing until the end; his friend Dr Watson notices much less, admires Holmes enormously, and writes it all down. The two of them make the perfect team, for solving crimes and for keeping readers guessing.

  Practice: Holmes and Watson

• 🐍 The Speckled Band A locked room, a whistle in the night

  A locked room, a whistle in the night, a dying woman's strange last words and a violent stepfather with a taste for wild animals: The Adventure of the Speckled Band (1892) is one of the most famous mysteries ever written, and Conan Doyle's own favourite of all his Holmes stories. This page tells it without giving the…

  Practice: The Speckled Band

• 🧩 The mystery genre Clues, red herrings and the big reveal

  Detective stories are a game between the writer and the reader. The writer hides the truth in plain sight, lays false trails, and dares you to solve the crime before the detective does. Every game has rules, and so does this kind of story: they are called the conventions of the genre.

  Practice: The mystery genre

• 🖊️ Writing a mystery Planting clues for the reader

  Writing a mystery is like setting a trap for your reader: everything they need to solve it must be there, but hidden so cleverly that they walk straight past it. Conan Doyle was a master of this. Borrow his tricks, and your reader will reach the last line saying "I should have seen it!"

  Practice: Writing a mystery

🎭 Shakespeare: The Tempest The Globe, the play, its characters and its language

A ship splits apart in a magical storm. On a strange island a magician, robbed of his dukedom twelve years ago, waits with his daughter, an airy spirit and a bitter servant, and now he has every one of his enemies exactly where he wants them. What will he do with them? The Tempest is one of the last plays William…

Practice: Chapter test: Shakespeare's The Tempest · Shakespeare: key words

• 🏟️ Shakespeare and his theatre The man, the Globe and Elizabethan audiences

  More than 400 years after he died, William Shakespeare's plays are performed somewhere in the world every day, in hundreds of languages. He wrote them to be watched by a noisy crowd standing in an open-air theatre, not to be studied in a classroom. Imagine that crowd, and the plays come alive.

  Practice: Shakespeare and his theatre

• 🌊 The story of The Tempest A storm, an island and a magician's plan

  The Tempest is a story of revenge that turns into a story of forgiveness. It all happens on one island in about four hours, and one man pulls the strings: Prospero, a magician who was cheated out of his dukedom twelve years before. Now his enemies' ship sails close to his island, and he raises a storm.

  Practice: The story of The Tempest

• 🧙 The characters Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, Caliban and Ferdinand

  On Prospero's island there are only four inhabitants: a magician, his daughter, a spirit and a servant who believes the island is his. Then the storm brings a shipload of visitors: a prince, a king, two traitors, an honest old man and a pair of clowns. Each of them wants something, and Prospero controls them all.

  Practice: The characters

• 📜 Shakespeare's language Thee and thou, verse and prose, famous lines

  Shakespeare's English can look strange at first: thee and thou, afeard, methought. But it is still English, and most of it you can work out. Read it aloud, listen for the rhythm, and look for the pictures the words paint. Some of his phrases are so good that we still use them today.

  Practice: Shakespeare's language

• 🕊️ Themes Power, freedom and forgiveness

  A theme is a big idea that a story keeps coming back to. The Tempest asks questions that still matter: Who has the right to rule? What does it mean to be free? And when someone has wronged you and you have them in your power, should you take revenge or forgive?

  Practice: Themes

🏁 Year 7 review Revision tips and the end-of-year test

You have reached the end of Year 7 English. Before the end-of-year test, look back over the year: the big idea of each chapter is below, with a link to go back to it. Then take the test at the bottom of this page.

Sections:

• How to revise 🧠
• The year in one table

Practice: End-of-year test: English