The CSET English exam can be one of the toughest challenges for teacher candidates seeking their teaching credentials for the English classroom in California. The most feared thing in a test takers mind is CSET English preparation. Let's clear up some myths and solve this CSET English conundrum with some practical techniques for you to attain good CSET English scores and your ideal English teaching job.
One thing for sure is the CSET English exam definitely requires a planned preparation. It has been proven that students who prepare for the CSET English exam attain better scores than students who do not place much emphasis in preparation.
Going forward in this article we will discuss about planning and then preparation. I have written this article based on advice and tips from hundreds of successful CSET English test takers and from my practical experience in coaching students for the CSET English exam.
The first thing to consider is how much time do you have to prepare for the CSET English test. Some students may have 3 weeks, some may have 3 months. Your CSET English study plan should be strictly based on your study schedule. In arriving at a schedule you will need to consider:
1. Self-assessment a. Strong areas b. Weaker areas c. Books or Online Course (Software)
Self-Assessment
Decide if you need a CSET English test prep course by examining your strong and weak areas of learning. For example, some may be good at reading from a book and then memorizing that information, while others may not have the capacity to hold information from a book and then recall it while taking the exam. If you belong to the first category buy some good books from major publishers and use free online resources and start your preparation based on them. This approach is also cheaper. Just keep in mind that a CSET English book is traditional, static, non-interactive learning except for a few quizzes that a publisher may provide.
If you belong to the second category then be careful in deciding what study materials to use for the CSET English exam as useless study guides flood the market and only a few good test prep books are available. Talk to students who have already taken the CSET English exam and find out which one is effective and will fit your learning style. Make sure you personally know these students. Do not take the advice of a supposed student in a public message forum. In the test preparation industry, publishers or their employees will often create bogus personae in public message forums to promote their products. I have seen many people fail the CSET English exam because they took the advice of a fake student from a CSET English message forum.
A good online English course is ACE the CSET English by Confab Publishing. Test takers say ACE the CSET English best resembles the actual CSET English test. ACE the CSET English has plenty of interactive, hands-on exercises such as: matching, crossword, fill-in the blank, multiple-choice, unscramble, point and click?essential tools for those who need extra help memorizing the materials required to pass the CSET English exam.
The course also promotes visual and audio learning in that it provides hours worth of video streamed from popular websites like TeacherTube and YouTube. The online course requires no special software and students can access the course with any typical browser and Internet connection.
There are many free resources available for the CSET English test on the net. Some of these sites include Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg.
Remember, a passing CSET English score will save you 1000's of dollars by landing you a teaching job quickly, as opposed to not passing and delaying your teaching career. So focus in on your CSET English preparation.
You are about to learn an important bit of information some publishers call a secret. What I am about to tell you is very important. The valuable information is that subtests III and IV are not essay questions. If you write an essay response you will not pass the CSET English exam. Please understand that you will run out of time on the CSET exam if you attempt an answer in essay format. You must write your answer in constructed-response format, not in essay format. In the English CSET prep class I teach, you will learn a fantastic method for answering constructed-response questions.
There are 10 composition and rhetoric questions and 40 literature and textual analysis questions for a total of 50 multiple-choice questions on subtest I.
There are 50 multiple-choice questions in the areas of language, linguistics, and literacy on subtest II.
Subtest III has 2 long constructed-response questions. One constructed-response question will be on a literary text such as a book, and the other constructed-response question will be on a nonliterary text such as a speech.
There are four constructed-response questions on subtest IV.
Time Management
You have 300 minutes (5 hours) to complete the CSET Single Subject English exam. If you elect to only take one or two subtests on a single test day, then you have more time although this is a more expensive choice than taking all four subtests at once.
You will have one hour to complete subtest I, one hour to complete subtest II, two hours to complete subtest III, and one hour to complete subtest IV. Knowing this, we can break the time down to a per answer basis.
On subtest I, you need to use no more than 1-minute per question. For subtest II, you need to use no more than 1-minute per question. For subtest III, no more than one hour per constructed-response question. On subtest IV no more than 15 minutes per constructed-response question.
A Passing Score
You need to land a 220 to pass the CSET English test which means you need to get about 75% of the questions right.
You must pass all four subtests to pass the test. People have not passed the CSET English test because they erroneously thought that their knowledge on one subtest would make up for the lack of knowledge on another subtest. Do not think that your strength on one subtest will make up for weakness on another subtest. You need to pass all four subtests to pass the CSET English test.
The Magic Pill
I do not believe in studying ?method? over ?content?. Some people believe, and some businesses are more than willing to to take advantage of this belief, that methods exist that will help you pass the CSET English exam without needing to learn all the required material. A competitor of mine that offers a CSET English study guide goes as far to make the claim that even if you are "brain-dead", you can pass the CSET exam by learning his super duper secret test taking methods. This publisher is trying to exploit everyone's desire for a quick fix, a "magic pill" to passing the CSET exam. My online CSET English study guide and course is all about content and having students complete memory enhancement exercises like flash cards, chronology, fill-in, matching, point and click, unscramble, quizzes, and even crossword puzzles. Having said this, I will reveal to you a method you may want to consider: the "2 of 4 Rule".
I came up with this method while creating tests for teachers over the last 10 years as the owner of Confab Publishing. What became obvious, over many years of creating tests like the CSET test, was that it is significantly harder to produce a good but incorrect answer-choice than it is to produce the correct answer. So usually only two attractive answer-choices are offered. One correct; the other either intentionally misleading or only partly right. The other two answer-choices are usually fluff. This makes intelligent guessing on the CSET test immensely effective. If you can cross out the two fluff choices, your probability of answering the question correctly will increase from 25% to 50%.
It is important that you do not go into the CSET test reasoning that you are going to pass by using the "2 of 4 Rule", or any other "method". If you put in the needed discipline and effort to pass the CSET test, you will know. If you put in the required studying, and you come to a question you simply do not know, only then should you consider using the "2 of 4 Rule". If you buy a good CSET English book or enroll in an online CSET English prep course like the one I teach, you will not need to rely heavily on methods like the "2 of 4 Rule", instead, the content you will learn in my CSET prep class will carry you through.
Both Lance Jepsen & Karen Cunningham are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Lance Jepsen has sinced written about articles on various topics from Education. Lance Jepsen is the founder of is the best CSET English test prep software. Make sure you visit http://www.acethecset.com for more information on CSET Test preparation.. Lance Jepsen's top article generates over 880 views. to your Favourites.
Karen Cunningham has sinced written about articles on various topics from Education. Karen Cunningham writes for which is the best way to ace the CSET English test. Please visit www.acethecset.com. Karen Cunningham's top article generates over 590 views. to your Favourites.