One of the most common comments/complaints that I have heard from my students over the last 23 years of teacher certification preparation is, “I got a 4.0 in grad school! How come I can’t pass these (MTEL Communication and Literacy) stupid tests?”

While there are always multiple factors that contribute to any individual’s test-taking journey, the most common issues why good students struggle with these exams (MTEL Communication and Literacy) is this – Good students aren’t always good test-takers (and vice-versa). 

Being a good student encompasses many skills, dedication, and perseverance.  Going to class every day, paying attention, taking good notes, asking questions, completing assignments, and studying for exams are all very important. Good students know what is expected because they listen carefully to their teachers and ask questions about what is important to learn. 

None of these skills/attributes apply to taking standardized exams.  A standardized exam is taken “blind.”  You don’t know exactly what to expect or what is important, so they are very difficult to prepare for.  Very little of what you’ve learned in school prepares for the way a standardized exam tests your knowledge.  You haven’t spent a semester’s worth of classes getting to know what the test creator wants you to know.  You can’t ask questions about what content will be tested or the exam’s format.  There’s no way to get clarification if you are confused. 

A good test-prep program fulfills the role of the absent professor.  ETI instructors, for example, explain exactly how to approach each section of the exam while teaching you the skills you’ll need for each section. There shouldn’t be any surprises. Having a friend or coworker who “knows grammar or writing” to tutor you is not often helpful.  Working with a test-prep expert who can teach the content is necessary.   

A student recently told me that she learned more from me in one 2-hour class than she learned from a specialized reading tutor in a year. I guarantee you that the reading specialist knows much more about reading than I do; I’ve never been trained in reading instruction. However, I’m able to break down the structure of writing to help people understand what they read, and I can explain exactly what each question means and how to answer them. 

The MTEL Communication And Literacy Exams Are Based On Basic Skills

That sounds like a good thing.  Basic skills, for the most part, should be easy. But you need to know these basic skills beyond the superficial. In Bloom’s Taxonomy terms, knowing them at the “Knowledge/Remember” level is not enough to help with these exams; they are not matching or fill-in-the-blank style tests, and the multiple-choice questions aren’t easy either (more on this below). You need to use concepts at the “Application/Apply” level.  Simply knowing definitions isn’t enough.

Public schools aren’t spending time on the basic skills like they used to. I noticed a big change in my students’ knowledge base in the early 2000s. Students were much less likely to understand basic grammar and punctuation than they had been a couple years before. I was at a loss to explain this until I met a retired English teacher. When I brought this up, he explained that sometime in the 1980s there was a major shift in how writing was taught. 

When I was a student in the Chelsea Public Schools, we had to diagram sentences. Parts of speech were drilled until they were branded onto our minds as if we were cattle. My 7^th grade English teacher made us recite a list of prepositions every day: “aboard, about, beneath, between, beyond…”

In the mid-80s, the powers-that-be of English education decided that it would be better to let kids write without so much structure and grammatical knowledge.  Students were encouraged to get their ideas on paper without worrying about the usual conventions of structure and grammar.  This worked great for some students, but it left many without the ability to understand basic grammar and sentence structure and without the ability to organize and structure their writing. 

Students can’t identify subjects and verb pairs, direct/indirect objects, prepositional phrases, when to use who/whom, find the main idea, and so on. All of this is vital for writing well and for understanding what you read. The Communication and Literacy’s writing and grammar tasks are directly impacted.

Reading comprehension for standardized exams is not explicitly taught in public schools.  Even those who read well and understand what they read get very confused because of the nature of the questions and answer choices.  It is hard to know exactly what the questions are asking you.  This is compounded by the nature of answer choices that are written to confuse—attractors.

Attractors!

Attractors are the trick answer choices that the test makers use to confuse test-takers.  To an extent, employing this technique makes sense. If the correct answer was too obvious, the test wouldn’t be valid; the exam would be too easy to be able to determine test-takers’ ability. Attractors confuse test-takers by shaping their thinking; they cause doubt and increase anxiety and second-guessing.

Unfortunately, low-confidence or “poor test-takers” are particularly susceptible to attractors.  Our educational system does not prepare students very well for standardized exams. Even MCAS-prep programs do not really teach students how to take tests. When I’ve co-taught with regular education teachers, they are always surprised when I teach test-taking skills; they had never been taught themselves.

For example, common grammatical mistakes (whom vs who) are used against test-takers.  They know what mistakes people commonly make, and those mistakes are mixed in with the answer choices; you pick the “obviously correct” answer,  but you get the problem wrong.  Most test-takers have no idea why they don’t pass or what they did wrong.  They don’t know what to study to improve. 

How ETI Helps With MTEL Communication and Literacy 

For anyone with a learning issue or  ESL students, all of these issues compound.  Our programs are built on special education/ESL principles.  We start with the basics and build from there.  Our instructors have special education backgrounds and understand your needs.

If you don’t have the basic grammatical, writing, or reading skills, we can help.  If you don’t understand exactly how attractors work and how to avoid them, you should consider taking a class with us. If you don’t really know how to use the process of elimination (there is an explicit process and a particular way to eliminate and NOT eliminate answer choices), then you should consider taking an ETI program.  We teach the necessary skills and strategies, so we can guarantee that you will pass.

People believe that good test takers are born, not made.  I don’t entirely disagree; many people seem to be naturally good test-takers; they see the games inherent in the questions and are able to use logic to get answers right even if they don’t understand the content very well. However, I disagree with the idea that good test-takers cannot be made.

Anyone can be taught to be a better test taker.

Anyone can be taught to “Avoid the Attractor,” ETI’s primary test-taking strategy and approach.

Anyone can be taught the correct way of using the process of elimination.

I want all educators to learn these skills and pass them on to their students.

ETI has been guaranteeing MTEL success since 1999.  If you haven’t been successful, come find out how we do it.