6.5 Guidance on reading assessments

The way you approach the reading assessments is really important. You can know all the things you need to know, but if you are unfamiliar with the assessment you may not be able to show your knowledge and skills.

Different examining organisations use different formats for their assessments. This means that there can be different styles of questions or a different number of questions, or the total mark can be different. However, some things are the same and so general guidance can be given.

Texts

In a Functional Skills English Level 1 reading assessment you will be required to read and answer questions on two different texts. The topics of these texts could be anything, but they generally relate to the real world in some way. They will be based on situations or subjects that should not be completely unfamiliar to you, such as work, interests or hobbies.

Available marks

Regardless of the type of question or the topic, you will be told how many marks each question is worth. It is important that you consider this information and ensure that your answer is detailed or complete enough to get all the marks. For example, if a question is worth four marks the answer will need to contain four things. This could be four separate pieces of information or two answers and two bits of evidence from the text.

Question formats

Different examining organisations use different types of questions. The two main types of questions you will come across are multiple choice and those that need short written answers.

In both cases you need to take care with your answers and check you have given the answer you intended. In answering multiple choice questions, it is very easy to tick the wrong box. It is also likely that two answers will be quite similar and therefore hard to choose between. If you can eliminate the two that are almost certainly wrong, you give yourself a better chance of working out the correct answer.

It is important with questions that need short written answers that you only give the information required. If four facts are needed, write down four facts. If you don’t need to explain something in detail, don’t. Lots of waffle could lead to you losing marks rather than picking up extras.

The Essential Skills Level 1 Communication qualification consists of two parts: a confirmatory test and a controlled task.

• In the confirmatory test, you are asked to read documents and answer multiple choice questions on them.

• The controlled task also assesses your reading skills, alongside your speaking and listening and writing skills. In the controlled task, you have to read two given documents (of about 250 words) and pick out the main points, such as by highlighting and/or making notes. You use the information from one of the documents to take part in a discussion and complete a piece of writing of about 250 words. You use the information from the other document in a second piece of writing.