IReading33.3%
Seven skills topics are about reading a passage yourself: main idea, supporting ideas, how the passage is organized, a word's meaning from context, what can be inferred, fact against opinion, and reading a table, chart or graph. Ten application topics are about helping a student read: sounding out words, splitting them into syllables and word parts, using the sentence around a word to decode it, telling synonyms, antonyms and homonyms apart, alphabetical order, prereading strategies, asking questions about a text, judging how well a student has understood, using a dictionary, and following written directions.
- I.A.1Pick the summary or paraphrase that captures a passage's main idea or primary purpose.
- I.A.2Pick the summary or paraphrase that captures the supporting ideas in a passage.
- I.A.3Recognize how a passage is organized.
- I.A.4Work out the meaning of words and phrases from their context in a passage.
- I.A.5Infer what follows or is implied from what a passage directly states.
- I.A.6Tell whether a statement in a passage is presented as fact or as opinion.
- I.A.7Read and interpret tables, diagrams, charts and graphs.
- I.B.1Help students sound out words using vowel length, consonant sounds and rhyme.
- I.B.2Help students split words into syllables, roots, prefixes and suffixes.
- I.B.3Help students decode a word or phrase from the surrounding sentence structure.
- I.B.4Tell synonyms, antonyms and homonyms apart.
- I.B.5Put words in alphabetical order.
- I.B.6Guide students in prereading strategies such as skimming and predicting.
- I.B.7Ask questions about a text that help students understand it.
- I.B.8Observe accurately how well a student understands and interprets a text.
- I.B.9Help students look things up in a dictionary.
- I.B.10Interpret written directions correctly.
Where people lose points: On main-idea questions the wrong options are usually true statements from the passage that are too narrow: a supporting detail offered as the main point. On inference questions the answer has to follow from what the passage says, not from what you happen to know about the subject. In the application topics the terms carry the question: a synonym means the same as another word, an antonym means the opposite, and a homonym sounds or is spelled like another word but means something different; a prefix is added before a root and a suffix after it.
IIMathematics33.3%
Twenty-three skills topics and one application topic. The skills run from arithmetic with whole numbers, fractions and decimals through place value, percentages, basic exponents, order of operations and estimation, to one-step equations and number sequences, then to time, unit conversion, shapes, perimeter, area and volume, and finally to data: plotting points, reading tables and graphs, and finding the mean, median and mode. Be able to do every one of them on paper.
- II.A.1Add, subtract, multiply and divide whole numbers, fractions and decimals.
- II.A.2See multiplication as repeated addition and division as repeated subtraction.
- II.A.3Read and interpret mathematical symbols such as plus and the inequality signs.
- II.A.4Know basic terms: sum, difference, product, quotient, numerator, denominator.
- II.A.5Place numbers in order relative to one another, for example a fraction that lies between two others.
- II.A.6Recognize different forms that represent the same number.
- II.A.7Use place value for whole numbers and decimals.
- II.A.8Calculate percentages.
- II.A.9Understand basic exponents as repeated multiplication.
- II.A.10Apply the order of operations: parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction.
- II.A.11Estimate answers with mental math.
- II.A.12Solve word problems.
- II.A.13Solve one-step linear equations in a single variable.
- II.A.14Find the next term in a number sequence.
- II.A.15Express time in more than one way, including converting between analog and digital forms.
- II.A.16Convert between units within one measurement system, such as inches to feet or centimetres to metres.
- II.A.17Identify basic geometric shapes, such as types of triangles and polygons.
- II.A.18Compute perimeter, area and volume for basic shapes.
- II.A.19Plot data on an xy-coordinate plane.
- II.A.20Interpret information shown in tables, charts and graphs.
- II.A.21Describe trends over time from a table, chart or graph of time-related data.
- II.A.22Build simple tables, charts and graphs.
- II.A.23Calculate the mean, median and mode of a data set.
- II.B.1Apply the math skills above in a classroom setting or in support of classroom instruction.
Where people lose points: Order of operations: multiplication and division are worked left to right as they come, and so are addition and subtraction, so 12 ÷ 3 × 2 is 8 and not 2. Mean, median and mode get swapped under time pressure: the mean is the total divided by the count, the median is the middle value once the numbers are in order, and the mode is the most frequent. Perimeter is the distance around a shape and area is the surface inside it. And do not skip the single application topic, II.B.1. It is one line in the outline, but ETS gives about a third of the math questions to classroom application, and those questions typically show a student's working and ask where it went wrong.
IIIWriting33.3%
Six skills topics ask you to spot an error in grammar, word usage, punctuation or spelling, and to name the parts of a sentence and the parts of speech. Six application topics follow the writing process a student goes through: prewriting to generate and organize ideas, choosing reference materials, drafting and revising, editing, writing for a particular purpose and audience, and recognizing the different modes of writing such as descriptive, persuasive and narrative.
- III.A.1Spot basic grammatical errors in standard written English.
- III.A.2Spot errors in word usage, such as commonly confused words.
- III.A.3Spot punctuation errors.
- III.A.4Identify the parts of a sentence, such as subject and verb or predicate.
- III.A.5Identify parts of speech: nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions.
- III.A.6Spot spelling errors.
- III.B.1Help students use prewriting, including freewriting and outlining, to generate and organize ideas.
- III.B.2Choose and use suitable reference materials.
- III.B.3Help students draft and revise: thesis statements, focused and organized paragraphs, and conclusions.
- III.B.4Edit writing for clarity, grammar, run-ons and fragments, punctuation and spelling.
- III.B.5Help students write for different purposes and audiences, with fitting language and a clear position.
- III.B.6Recognize and write in different modes and forms, such as descriptive, persuasive, narrative and letter writing.
Where people lose points: The skills questions ask you to find the error, not to rewrite the sentence, so practice deciding what kind of error it is: agreement, tense, a confused word, a missing or extra comma, a spelling. Commonly confused words are a topic of their own: their, there and they're; its and it's; affect and effect. In the application topics, keep the stages of writing apart. Prewriting produces ideas, drafting gets them onto the page, revising changes content and organization, and editing fixes sentences. A question describes a student at one stage, and the right answer is the help that fits that stage, not the one after it.