Course guides › Grade 7 › English Home Language
Grade 7 English Home Language starts the Senior Phase. Learners analyse short stories, poems, novel extracts and youth drama, write narrative essays, formal letters, reviews and reports, read media and visual texts critically, and work with more advanced grammar.
This guide follows the DBE’s 2023/24 Grade 7 English HL Annual Teaching Plan and our course topic plan. The course is being built with Zack as the guide.
Course status: coming soon. We are still building the Grade 7 English Home Language (CAPS) course, so it can’t be bought yet. This guide explains what the CAPS curriculum covers this year, so you can use it now. The planned price is R100 per subject per year.
What’s covered, term by term
Term 1
- Short story: character, plot, conflict and setting; writing a review
- Plurals, degrees of comparison and simple tenses
- Poetry: imagery, rhyme, rhythm and stanzas
- Verbs, pronouns and figures of speech
- Novel extract and a descriptive paragraph
- Prefixes, suffixes, roots and auxiliary verbs
- Writing a narrative essay (planning, paragraphing)
- Nouns and sentence types
- Newspaper and magazine articles; a formal letter
- Abstract nouns, prepositions and paragraph order
Term 2
- Advertisements, posters and TV news: visual and persuasive techniques
- Direct and indirect speech
- Instructional texts: recipes and directions
- Adverbs and prepositions of time and place
- Novel extract: a book review or letter to the author
- Sentence parts: predicate and object
- Forms and questionnaires
- Collective nouns and adverbs
Term 3
- Youth drama: dialogue and interview
- Complex sentences, comparatives and superlatives
- Research project: notes, mind maps, write-up and oral presentation
- Literature revision: folklore, drama and short story
- Attributive adjectives and paragraph types
- Infographics and tweets
- Demonstrative and relative adjectives; sequence
Term 4
- Maps and directions
- Prepositions and comparatives
- Notice, agenda and minutes
- Pronouns and reported speech
- Email, diary entry and flyer
- Interrogative pronouns and finite verbs
- Exam revision: comprehension, cartoons, adverts and graphs
Key ideas, with worked examples
Conflict in a story
Conflict drives the plot. It can be internal (inside a character’s mind) or external (with another person, society or nature).
Worked example. A learner who wants to tell the truth but fears losing friends faces internal conflict.
Persuasive techniques in adverts
Adverts use emotive words, slogans, celebrities, bright images and special offers to persuade.
Worked example. “Limited offer! Only R99 – join thousands of happy customers!” uses urgency, a low price and the bandwagon effect.
Formal letter register
Formal letters use complete sentences, no slang, and a polite, clear purpose.
Worked example. Not “Hey, fix the taps!” but “I am writing to request that the broken taps in the boys’ bathroom be repaired.”
Reported speech
Reported speech moves the tense back and changes pronouns and time words.
Worked example. She said, “I will come tomorrow.” → She said that she would come the next day.
Common mistakes (and how to fix them)
- Summarising the plot when the question asks for analysis (why, how, what effect).
- Slang in formal writing.
- Wrong format for minutes, agendas or letters.
- Not quoting from the text to support an answer.
- Paragraphs without a topic sentence.
Tips for parents
- Agree a routine, then step back. Senior Phase learners like to work on their own; check in on the week’s work rather than every page.
- Discuss the news: what is fact and what is opinion?
- Encourage wide reading, including magazines and non-fiction.
- Read your child’s essays aloud to them; they will hear their own mistakes.
Frequently asked questions
Will the course use our school’s set books?
Set works differ between schools and are copyrighted, so the course uses its own short original texts that practise the same skills.
How much will the Grade 7 English Home Language course cost?
R100 per subject per year once it opens. Like our live courses, it will be one course for the whole year with Terms 1 to 4 inside it, so there’s nothing extra to pay per term.
When will the course be ready?
We’re building it now. The Grade 7 English Home Language card on our home page shows “Coming soon” until the course is ready, and then it changes to “Open course”.
Will it work on a phone, and will it use a lot of data?
Yes, it will work on a phone. Like our live Maths courses, it will open in a phone’s web browser or in the free Coursebox app for Android and iPhone. Lessons are pictures and short text with quizzes and no videos, so it uses little data.
Is there an Afrikaans version?
This is the English Home Language course, so it is in English. Afrikaans is a separate subject with its own course (Afrikaans First Additional Language).
Get ready for Grade 7 English Home Language
The Grade 7 English Home Language (CAPS) course is coming soon at R100 per subject per year. Bookmark this guide and use the term lists above to follow what your child is doing at school. While you wait, our Grade 7 Mathematics course is available through Coursebox.
Back to the Grade 7 course cards · All Grade 7 guides
Sources and review
This guide is based on the DBE’s CAPS English Home Language Grades 7–9 document, the 2023/24 Grade 7 English HL Annual Teaching Plan and our course topic plan. Last reviewed: 31 October 2026. AI Buddies is an independent project and is not endorsed by the Department of Basic Education.