First, in this initial section there are useful Literacy tips listed. We pride ourselves on offering free practice test resources, including literacy test tips. Hope that you find these literacy test tips useful!
Literacy tips
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.
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.
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.
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