Praxis: Expert Guides and Resources

When you first began looking into what is or isn’t tested on the Praxis writing exam, your reaction to finding out that there were questions about capitalization was probably something like “There are questions about capitalization on this test?! What am I, in third grade?”Yes, you almost certainly already know that the first letters of the first words of sentences are capitalized, as are people’s names; the names of proper places like cities, states, or countries; the names of companies like “Facebook”; the names of sports teams and bands; and the words in the titles of books, movies, and so on.

Before you register to take the Praxis, check with the local department of education to make sure you’re taking the right test. Don’t ask ETS or your mom or anyone else who isn’t in a position to admit you to a teaching program; they may give you wrong information, which can lead to wasted time and money.You can find out how to register to take the Praxis Core by going to the ETS website.

On test day, it’s all about pacing yourself. Look at the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators exam from the perspective of how many questions you have to answer per minute: The math and reading sections give you 85 minutes to answer 56 questions. This gives you a little over a minute and a half to answer each question.

Before you get too excited, understand that the following information isn’t actually about how to cheat on the Praxis. It’s really about the most efficient ways to prepare for the exam. But “preparation sheet” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. Besides, cheating is unnecessary if you know what you’re doing, and sometimes figuring out what to do is actually easier.

For the Praxis Core exam, you need to become familiar with many ways to display or represent your data. Using lists, tables, graphs, charts, and plots to represent data is a surefire way to make sure you aren’t tricked by the data. These methods of organizing data can also help you see patterns more readily. In the sections that follow, you become skilled at dissecting and interpreting different types of data representations.

Correctly answering selected-response items on the writing portion of the Praxis requires that you read each question carefully. Where possible, put the question into your own words. Be sure to read every choice before you make your selection. Eliminate the obviously wrong choices The process of elimination can help you choose the correct answer in a selected-response question.

You improve your chances of choosing the right answer on the Praxis math test — and choosing it quickly — by eliminating choices that you know are wrong. This narrows the set of choices to consider and helps lead you to the right answer. Not only does this increase the probability of getting the right answer, but another advantage is that it helps lead you to better considerations.

The most unusual thing about the Praxis Core reading test (don’t worry — we said unusual, not difficult) is that it includes what are referred to as visual- and quantitative-information questions, which is the Praxis’s fancy term for questions about charts and graphs. Most reading and writing tests don’t do this.