Test Types & Process of the OSSLT
Kent students took an important test – the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT), which includes reading and essay sections with multiple-choice questions.
Part A
Three reading comprehension essays and one 100-word writing task on narrative, expository, or news report topics.
Part B
One reading conversation, eight multiple-choice grammar questions, and 1 opinion essay with a 500-word limit.
Questions types of the OSSLT
The school conducted a rigorous and orderly mock exam a week before the official exam. On this particular day, teachers and students arrived early at the examination room and prepared thoroughly for the exam. As soon as the teacher started the timer, the students focused their attention and began to answer the questions carefully.
The reading section was the first part of the exam. Part A’s three reading sections included many multiple-choice questions, followed by sequencing and short answer questions. For some students, this was similar to reading comprehension and completion questions in secondary schools in China, where reading comprehension took nearly twenty minutes to complete.
Part A of the exam was completed in one hour, with a 15-minute break before beginning Part B. The essays in Part B were more flexible and colloquial than the academic essays in Part A. The first essay in Part B was written as a dialogue and covers 1-2 questions about oral communication.
The final writing section required a 500-word essay, which was difficult for some students to complete in a limited time.The test duration for Part B was also one hour, and everyone submitted it in the last three minutes to ensure that all of the content was submitted completely. Throughout this process, the students all performed successfully.
After the mock exam, everyone was familiar with the exam questions and process. As a result, students were less nervous and unfamiliar with the official exam and instead approached it with a more positive attitude. The mock exam experience assisted students in better planning their time. Some students completed Part A in 40-50 minutes, while others completed the grammar questions in 20 minutes and spent the remaining 40 minutes writing.
Some students performed exceptionally well in the exam due to their usual accumulation and even used some difficult vocabulary in writing their essays. The provincial exam was an ingenious way to test the standard English grammar points, such as multiple-choice grammar questions and determining the meaning of words in context. Furthermore, this test helped students understand their weaknesses, and a perfect language test can assist us in better-identifying gaps.
After some skilled operations, this provincial exam was completed!
