Quest for Foundations in English

This quests lays a solid foundation for English before embarking on an IGCSE English Quest or equivalent grade qualification.

The Skills

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In this quest you wil cover three main skill areas:

Grammar

Grammar is about the understanding and application of the rules of the English language. This quest will cover all the grammar concepts required for our more advanced Englishs courses as well (in other words, the concepts of grammar will be applied in more advanced courses, but no new learning material is needed).

Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension ia about the ability to understand what you read and connect facts from various sources. Understanding involves explicit meaning of text as well as implicit meaning.

Obviously, the complexity of the text makes a difference with this skill – when sentences are short and the vocabulary is basic, it is much easier to understand text than text with long sentences and less frequently used words.

Additionallyl, measuring this skill partially depends on your ability to write anwers to questions – you may understand what you read, but you may not have the ability to answer in order to explain your understanding. Therefore, reading through a text may be deceiving until you aim to answer questions on it.

Our quests are not grade or curriculum specific, but the aim is to master text roughly the same complexity as those used in British Schools for Grade 9. That being said – we do not believe in limiting text complexity to a specific grade level. A survey of 500 teachers conducted by the   National Council of Teachers of English   found that 76% of educators believe that focusing on grade-level readability can lead to uninspiring and overly simplified texts, ultimately failing to challenge and engage students effectively, and we agree with them. But having a minimum text complexity level in mind is relevant if you want to ensure that you measure effectively if a skill is mastered.

Seeing that we provide the reading material you do not have to be concerned with understanding how we measure the level of complexity in text, however, understanding it may clarify what skills are covered in this quest. More importantly – our quests are designed to empower you to master these skills in any way you can. If you want to use material outside of the ones we provide, then it may be handy to know what to look for in text for reading comprehension. If not, you may skip this part and trust that the material we provide are sufficient:

School grade standards vary from curriculum to curriculum, and country to country. Mentioning “British Grade 9 English” does not say much unless you have access to British Grade 9 English material, so a better way to define the text level is to use a more global standard. There are several out there, and we listed them with their minimum score for this skill:

✨ Flesch Reading Ease Score: a percentage – the higher, the easier the material is to read. Your aim is to master text at a level of 60 – 70% – or lower .

✨ Flesch-Kincaid Grade: A score invented based on the grade level of American schools. Your aim is to master text at a level of 10 or higher.

✨ Gunning-Fox Index: metric used to  measure the readability of a text , developed by Robert Gunning in 1952. It considers the  number of sentences ,  number of words , and the number of complex words consisting of three or more syllables in the text. Your aim is to master a text level of 10 or higher.

✨ CEFR Level (Common European Framework of References for Languages): Text are measured as A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 (from easiest to hardest). Your aim is to master text at B2 level or higher.

See here for some example text that falls within the above brackets.

✨Writing – creativity combined with understanding and applying various writing teqniques makes your writing shine!

These areas are shown separate, but in reality they influence one another – for example, improving your vocabulary (which would fall under reading comprehension) will also improve our writing skills.

Open the English Skill Map and click on each Skill Icon to get more detail of the content and skills covered in these areas.

The Approach

This quest is made up of several smaller quests, each with it’s own set of adventures . An adventure could involve:

✨reading or watching online material from this site as well as other sites

✨completing online quizzes and other interactive games

✨interacting with other SkilQuesters by responding to prompts on online material, asking questions or answering them

✨assisting ,,,, on her journey to learn English (more about that later)

However – the goal is to find the Grammar Stone, Comprehension Cloak and the Magical Writing Cap. Earn XP, SkillQuest Coins and Skill Treasures in order to get there (see below for more detail).

Read more about our approach to quests here.

The Game

✨Your end goal: find the Grammar Stone, Comprehension Cloak and the Magical Writing Cap.

✨Earn XP (experience points). XP is a measure of your…well…your experience. Earn XP for completing any interactive material, as well as for completing adventures at least three days in a week. You also earn XP by asking or answering questions online. (Our Social Hub is moderated – quetions and answers must be relevant to the topic).

✨Level up by increasing your XP. There are 5 levels – you start at Level 1.

✨Interactive quizzes and games are used to help you measure your progress on specific skills for yourself. Earn SkillQuest Coins by scoring 70% or higher on interactive material. (Earn 2 coins for scoring 70 – 79%, 5 coins for scoring 80 – 89% and 10 coins for scoring 90 – 100%.) Also use opportunities to trade XP for Coins!

✨Unlock Skill Treasures during your quests by scoring at least 80% on a specific skill.

✨Collect all the Skill Treasures for a specific Skill Group, and trade them for a higher Skill Treasure. (Look at the Skill Treasure map to understand better how skills relate – several small skills combine to make one larger skill.)

✨Adventures show you ahead which skills you are chasing by doing them. Also use your Skill Map to see your progress on skills. Can you think of any other creative ways to master these skills?

✨Use Coins to purchase various game items, and have fun!

Read more about our approach to gamifying our quests here.