EDUC 281- Special Topics: CASE Reading and Writing

EDUC 281 is a tailored course that provides targeted instruction to students seeking entrance to the teacher-education program via the Praxis Core (Reading and Writing) exams. Students will investigate and study numerous topics covered on these assessments and apply those to practical, written, and literary settings. 

 CASE READING TOPICS:

1. Key Ideas and Details:

  • Main idea and primary purpose: identify accurate summaries or paraphrases of the main idea or primary purpose of a reading selection. 
  • Supporting ideas: identify accurate summaries or paraphrases of the supporting ideas and specific details in a reading selection.
  • Inferences: identify inferences and implications that can reasonably be drawn from the directly stated content of a reading selection. 

2. Craft, Structure, and Language Skills:

  • Attitude and tone: identify accurate descriptions of the author’s tone or attitude toward material discussed in a reading selection. 
  • Organization and structure: identify key transition words and phrases in a reading selection and how they are used, identify accurate descriptions of how a reading selection is organized in terms of cause/effect, compare/contrast, problem/solution, and identify the role that an idea, reference, or piece of information plays in an author’s discussion or argument. 
  • Meanings of words Identify the meanings of words as they are used in the context of a reading selection. 
  • Fact or opinion Determine whether information presented in a reading selection is presented as fact or opinion.

3. Integration of Knowledge and Ideas:

  • Diverse media and formats: identify accurate interpretations of texts that include visual representations. 
  • Evaluation of arguments: identify the relationships among ideas presented in a reading selection, determine whether evidence strengthens, weakens, or is relevant to the arguments in a reading selection, determine the assumptions on which an argument or conclusion is based, and draw conclusions from material presented in a reading selection. 
  • Analysis and comparison of texts: recognize ideas or situations that are similar to what has been presented in a reading selection, apply ideas presented in a reading selection to other situations, and recognize points of agreement and disagreement between two texts.

CASE WRITING TOPICS:

1. Text Types, Purposes, and Production:

  • Produce an argumentative essay to support a claim using relevant and sufficient evidence.
  • Write clearly and coherently 
  • Address the assigned task appropriately for an audience of educated adults. 
  • Organize and develop ideas logically, making coherent connections between them. 
  • Provide and sustain a clear focus or thesis 
  • Use supporting reasons, examples, and details to develop clearly and logically the ideas presented.
  • Demonstrate facility in the use of language and the ability to use a variety of sentence structures.
  • Construct effective sentences that are generally free of errors in standard written English.

2. Writing Expository Texts:

  • Produce an informative/explanatory essay to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. 
  • Address the assigned task appropriately for an audience of educated adults. 
  • Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis d. organize and develop ideas logically, making coherent connections between them. 
  • Synthesize information from multiple sources on a subject. 
  • Integrate and attribute information from multiple sources on a subject, avoiding plagiarism. 
  • Provide and sustain a clear focus or thesis h. demonstrate facility in the use of language and the ability to use a variety of sentence structures. 
  • Construct effective sentences that are generally descriptive.
  • Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts and to make effective choices for meaning or style. Choose words and phrases for effect and to convey ideas precisely.
  • Maintain consistency in style and tone.

3. Language and Research Skills for Writing:

  • Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage.
  • Grammatical relationships to recognize and correct: – errors in the use of adjectives and adverbs – errors in noun-noun agreement – errors in pronoun-antecedent agreement – errors in pronoun case – errors in the use of intensive pronouns – errors in pronoun number and person – vague pronouns – errors in subject-verb agreement – inappropriate shifts in verb tense. 
  • Structural relationships to recognize and correct: – errors in the placement of phrases and clauses within a sentence – misplaced and dangling modifiers – errors in the use of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions – fragments and run-ons – errors in the use of correlative conjunctions – errors in parallel structure.
  • Word choice to recognize and correct: – errors in the use of idiomatic expressions – errors in the use of frequently confused words – wrong word use – redundancy. 
  • No errors: – sentences are free of errors in the conventions of standard English grammar and usage. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization and punctuation 
  • Mechanics to recognize and correct: – errors in capitalization – errors in punctuation > commas (e.g., the use of a comma to separate an introductory element from the rest of the sentence) > semicolons (e.g., the use of a semicolon [and perhaps a conjunctive adverb] to link two or more closely related independent clauses) > apostrophes (e.g., the use of an apostrophe to form contractions and frequently-occurring possessives).
4. Research Skills:
  • Recognize and apply appropriate research skills and strategies. 
  • Assess the credibility and relevance of sources. 
  • Recognize the different elements of a citation. 
  • Recognize effective research strategies appropriate to a particular research task. 
  • Recognize information relevant to a particular research task.

Special Note: Familiarize yourself with test questions to become comfortable with the types of questions you’ll find on the Praxis tests. The Praxis assessments include a variety of question types: constructed response (for which you write a response of your own); selected response, for which you select one or more answers from a list of choices or make another kind of selection (e.g., by clicking on a sentence in a text or by clicking on part of a graphic); and numeric entry, for which you enter a numeric value in an answer field. You may be familiar with these question formats from taking other standardized tests. If not, familiarize yourself with them so you don’t spend time during the test figuring out how to answer them.