When potential students ask me how hard a certain MTEL exam is, or if they should take a course of ours to pass the MTEL, I refer them to the MTEL practice exams, and I don’t mean a practice exam from a private company who is trying to get your business.  If you Google “MTEL practice test,” you will see several links come up before the official site.  Make sure you click HERE to access the official tests published by DESE and Pearson.  Other sites’ exams are useless (so are most online publications, books, and programs, by the way).

Reasons to take the MTEL practice exams:

1. They give a great representation of what you’ll see on a real test

The practice questions follow the same format as you’ll see on your official MTEL.  There will be about the same number of the same types (content-wise) of questions.  The tests for education licensure questions themselves will be on the same content, and the wording of the questions and answer choices will be of the same style as the real ones.  

Because of all the similarities to the real MTELs, your performance on a practice exam will be an excellent gauge on whether you are ready to take a real MTEL.  Take the free practice exam before spending $130 on the real thing.  Put that money towards a good prep course with an MTEL study guide if you need one.  

2. You get practice with the style of questions

As noted above, you will get to practice with the style of questions and answer choices that you’ll see on a real MTEL.  This is critically important if you’re not a good test-taker (if you aren’t, you might want to check out ETI’s programs as we have developed a logic-based test-taking system, and test-taking skills are woven into all our courses).  Many students who struggle with test-taking have difficulty understanding the questions or get confused by the answer choices (we call the trick answer choices “attractors” and teach you how to avoid them.)  

After we teach our test-taking system, we assign several MTEL practice exams (current and retired) for practice.  Our students find practicing the system with the practice tests invaluable—the learn skills that they carry with them and apply to every test they will ever take, and they pass on these skills to their students as well (for MCAS, for example), so our classes can actually help you in your career.

3. MTEL practice test can help you study

The content on the practice exams is the same as you will see on the real exam.  This means that when properly used, the exams can actually help you prepare.  Simply research all the content you see on the practice exam, and you will have a leg up on passing.  It’s because this is such a daunting task that companies like ETI are in business.  We’ve done all the research for you and can teach it in a way you’ll understand and remember.  

Remember that wrong answers aren’t necessarily a bad thing.  Bob Ross and his “happy accidents” come to my mind when students make mistakes.  If you can figure out why you got a question wrong—a lack of content knowledge, misunderstanding the question, falling for an attractor, applying the process of elimination to a multiple choice question incorrectly—you can improve your process and become a better test-taker with each mistake.  

4. MTEL practice test can improve your score!

Given the above reasons, using and studying the genuine MTEL practice exams can improve your MTEL score and help you pass! Keep the following points in mind when studying from the genuine MTEL practice exams:  

• The Open Response items can be a bit different than you might see on the real test.  The format of the ORs sometimes is different than on the real test; however, the content, for the most part, is very similar and a fair representation in terms of the level of understanding you’ll need to do well. 
• Sometimes the sample answers of the open responses on the practice MTELs are not good representations of how you should answer the ORs on the genuine MTEL.  If you are not confident in the content or the structure of an OR, you might want to consider a test-prep program (joinETI.com, for example).  
• More content than is covered on the practice exams will be there, so study hard!  You can’t take success on a practice for granted and be assured that you will pass the real MTEL.  The practice exams give you a sample of the content you will see on the real exam.  What makes many of the MTELs so difficult is the breadth of knowledge you need in order to be successful. 

Good luck studying!  If you think you will need assistance, please consider letting ETI help you prepare.  We have been guaranteeing MTEL success since 1999!