Alberta PAT common mistakes
Alberta PAT · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering inference and 'attitude/tone' questions from personal reaction to the topic instead of pointing to a specific line in the passage before choosing an option.
The passage is about a familiar experience (a move, a loss, a school conflict), so the student recognises the feeling and stops reading for evidence; under time pressure the first plausible-sounding option wins.
What to do instead
Enforce a two-step routine on every inference item: underline the word in the stem (tone, attitude, main purpose), then find one quoted phrase that supports the choice and write its line number in the margin. If no line number can be written, the option is wrong regardless of how true it feels.
Skipping the words in the question stem that set the scope - choosing a true statement about the passage instead of the statement that answers what was actually asked (e.g., 'the main purpose of paragraph 4' answered with a detail from paragraph 2; 'which is NOT' answered with a 'which is').
Distractor options are deliberately true statements about the text, so the student matches on familiarity rather than on the task; negative stems and 'best described as' phrasing are read as filler.
What to do instead
Circle the stem's key noun and any scope word (paragraph number, speaker, 'NOT', 'best', 'most likely') before reading the options. Then write the option letter next to the circled word and re-read the stem with the option substituted in as a full sentence.
Writing the narrative or functional piece without deliberately hitting the assigned purpose, audience and form, and leaving no time to reread the draft.
Students draft the story they already wanted to tell and treat the prompt's bulleted requirements as decoration; planning and revision are skipped because the writing section is last and time has already been eaten by the reading section.
What to do instead
Spend the first four minutes converting the prompt's bullets into a short checklist (purpose, audience, form, two required content points) and keep it beside the draft. Reserve the final five minutes to tick each item and fix sentence boundaries and verb tense, not to add new content.
Translating the English question into French in their head and answering with an English word, an English sentence structure, or a literal calque ('je suis d'accord avec la raison' for 'I agree with the reason').
Comprehension and production load run at the same time on a timed test; when the French word is missing, the fastest route is to borrow from English rather than to rephrase within French.
What to do instead
Rehearse a small set of paraphrase frames ('cette phrase montre que…', 'l'auteur veut dire que…', 'la raison pour laquelle…') so answers can be built entirely from the stem's own vocabulary. Keep a personal lexicon of recurring question words and literary terms, and practise answering aloud in full French sentences rather than single words.
Extracting the numbers from a word problem and operating on them before identifying which quantity is being asked for - computing area when perimeter is required, or adding a rate to a total instead of multiplying.
Keyword spotting ('altogether', 'in all', 'each') feels faster than modelling the situation, and the answer choices are built to match these partial understandings.
What to do instead
Before any arithmetic, restate the question in one written sentence ending in a unit ('I need the length of fence, in metres, around the outside'), label each given number with what it measures, and check the final answer's unit and rough size against that sentence.
Doing multi-step calculations mentally and writing only the final answer, so a single slip in order of operations, a sign, or a fraction operation is invisible and uncorrectable within the time left.
Mental arithmetic feels like a time-saving strategy, and students believe showing steps is only for part-marks, not for accuracy; the non-calculator portion punishes this most.
What to do instead
Write one line per operation, including the intermediate value, and estimate the answer first (e.g., 3/4 × 80 is a bit under 80, so 600 signals a slip). Convert every fraction and decimal to the same form before combining.
Substituting the wrong measurement into a geometry formula - using a diameter where the radius belongs, mixing centimetres and metres in one calculation, or confusing surface area with volume.
Diagram labels and formula recall are handled separately, and the unit mismatch is invisible on paper because the numbers alone 'look right'.
What to do instead
Write the formula first, then write the substitution with units attached (V = π × (4 cm)² × 10 cm), and make unit conversion an explicit separate line before substituting. Decide area/surface/volume by asking whether the answer should be in square or cubic units.
Applying the everyday meaning of a scientific term instead of its scientific definition - treating a 'theory' as a guess, 'pure' as clean, 'work' as any effort, or 'mass' and 'weight' as interchangeable.
These words are learned in ordinary conversation years before science class, and the everyday sense answers the question plausibly enough that no further checking occurs.
What to do instead
Build a three-column card for each term: scientific definition, school example, and a deliberately wrong everyday use that must be rejected. Before answering, say which definition the question is operating under, and flag any option that only works under the everyday meaning.
Reading data tables and graphs for a number that matches an answer option rather than reading the axes, units and intervals first - misreading which variable is independent, ignoring a break or a scale that goes up by 5, or comparing two bars that are not on the same axis.
Charts are scanned visually rather than decoded, and the distractor values are placed to reward that scan.
What to do instead
Before looking at any option, describe the graph in one written sentence: what is on each axis, its units and step size, and what the general trend is. Then state the relationship in words ('as X increases, Y decreases') before touching the choices.
Answering source-based questions with personal opinion or present-day judgement, without first identifying who created the source, when, and for what purpose.
The questions are phrased conversationally ('What does this source suggest about…'), so they read as invitations to comment, and the origin caption is treated as decoration.
What to do instead
Use a fixed first pass over every source: author/creator, date, type of document, and intended audience, written in the margin. Then require that each chosen answer be defensible by pointing at a specific word or detail inside the source, not at general knowledge.
Collapsing concepts that are taught close together in time - treating rights and responsibilities, assimilation and accommodation, or consensus and compromise as synonyms, and placing events in the wrong order when a question turns on sequence.
The terms share topic vocabulary and appear in the same unit, so they are stored as one fuzzy cluster; chronology is memorised as a list of dates rather than as cause and effect.
What to do instead
Keep a two-column contrast chart for each confusable pair with a one-line definition and a concrete Canadian example on each side. Maintain a single running timeline on which every new event is placed against two already-known events, and answer sequence questions from the timeline rather than from memory.