Literacy Tips literacy test tips and literacy test practice

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Literacy practice tips

We are focusing on one of the key communication skills in professional life. That’s why literacy is often included in aptitude exams.
To prepare properly for literacy tests, you must plan your practice correctly.
Before starting your literacy practice, find a quiet place to work.
Set a timer on your phone to see how quickly you can answer the literacy test questions (Williams, Passing verbal reasoning tests book, 2012).
In addition, is better to prepare for a specific exam instead of solving random literacy test questions.

Literacy Test Tips – Spelling Test

This section of the Professional Skills Test – Literacy test measures your ability to spell correctly. This is an audio test in which you listen to the questions through headphones. You need to use standard English spellings.

Each question presents you with a sentence. This sentence contains a missing word. Insert the correct missing word from the four options. Although the practice questions that follow have a written format, they are at the same difficulty level as the audio test.

Literacy Test Tips – Punctuation Test

This section of the Professional Skills Test – Literacy test measures your ability to apply effective punctuation to set passages. Accurate punctuation is a key element of written communication. Badly punctuated writing is like a road without road markings – it is all too easy for the reader to get lost and confused.

You will be presented with a block of text with missing or incorrect punctuation. You need to highlight each punctuation error and also where missing punctuation should be inserted.

Literacy Tips literacy test tips and literacy test practice

This will be done in a computerised format in the actual test. There will be a block of all the possible punctuation marks and the letters of the alphabet on-screen. You will drag the correct punctuation from this block to its position in the passage.

Literacy Test Tips – Grammar Test

This section of the Professional Skills Test – Literacy test measures your ability to use good grammar, an essential component of effective written and spoken communication

In the actual test you will need to select the correct phrase or sentence to insert into a short passage. You will be given a choice of several choices, only one of which is grammatically correct. In the practice questions below, identify which sentence is grammatically correct.

Literacy Test Tips – Comprehension Test

This section of the Professional Skills Test – Literacy test measures your ability to fully comprehend passages of text:

Firstly, Presenting the same information in a different way.
Secondly, Identifying the key points.
Thirdly, Inferences.
Lastly, Deductions.

Literacy Tips literacy test tips and literacy test practice

There are several different questions types that you might encounter in the comprehension test. Go with your instinct. Think about the reading level and tone. Does it sound like school policy to you? Does it read as though it is information for teachers? Is the piece’s reading level accessible to pupils?

Another question format asks you to suggest summary headings. Analyse the main point(s) of the paragraph objectively. Don’t be misled by something that’s only mentioned once in a single phrase or sentence. It can be helpful, particularly if you are short of time, to focus on the first and last sentences in a paragraph. This is where you are likely to find the topic sentence. In a well-written paragraph, the topic sentence summarises the paragraph’s main point.

For each passage you need to consider both the overall meaning and the detail. To assess the bigger picture, ask yourself questions such as : What is the main message? Who is the intended audience? When reflecting on the passage’s detail ask yourself: What are the facts? What’s the most important information in a passage?

It is not possible to cover the full range of different question types that can be found in the Professional Skills Test – Comprehension test.

– Firstly, summarising the main points that the passage makes.

– Secondly, placing statements based on the passage into set categories.

– Thirdly, putting sentences about a passage describing sequential events into the correct order.

Literacy Tips literacy test tips and literacy test practice

Verbal Reasoning Test Tips

These come in many different types of format. The traditional comprehension format is to have a short text passage followed by a series of questions about facts, opinions, conclusions from the passage content. A bit like those English tests in primary school where you answered questions on a novel extract. Regardless of the type of test, it’s vital to remember:

To carefully read each question. Often questions hinge on 1-2 keywords so you must take more care to interpret these accurately.
If questioned whether something “always” applies whilst the passage states that it is “sometimes” the case, then this is a false interpretation.
One useful strategy is to scan the passage initially, then to read it in more detail.
It’s more efficient as you answer each question if you can recall roughly where to find the answer in the passage.

Practise your verbal reasoning skills using the free verbal reasoning tests available at the main test publisher websites. For this reason alone, we strongly advise practising sample questions from Kenexa-IBM, TalentQ and SHL sites.