MTTC English Language Arts (7-12) (130) common mistakes
MTTC English Language Arts (7-12) (130) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When a constructed-response item asks how a teacher should address a student's reading difficulty, the candidate describes generic 'differentiated instruction' or 'scaffolding' without naming a specific strategy, the text or skill it targets, and how its success would be checked.
Under time pressure, candidates reach for broad pedagogical vocabulary learned in methods courses, believing it signals competence; the rubric, however, rewards concrete, text-anchored instructional decisions and evidence of monitoring, so generic language scores at the lower levels.
What to do instead
Practice a fixed three-part sentence pattern for every instructional prompt: name the specific strategy (e.g., explicit morphology instruction on the Latin root in a target word), tie it to the exact skill and evidence in the scenario, and state the observable check (student reads five new words with that root at 80 percent accuracy). Write three such responses and self-score against a checklist requiring all three parts.
The candidate labels a passage 'first-person,' 'third-person limited,' or 'omniscient' by spotting the pronoun 'I' or 'he' rather than by testing whether the narrator has access to characters' unspoken thoughts and whether that access is restricted to one character.
Point of view is taught early with pronoun cues, so candidates apply a shortcut; exam items deliberately use first-person narrators who report only external behavior or third-person narrators who enter multiple minds, punishing the pronoun-only rule.
What to do instead
For each narrative passage, answer two questions before labeling: whose consciousness can the narrator enter, and how many? Then map: one mind inside = limited (first or third); many minds = omniscient; narrator reports only observable action = objective/dramatic. Drill with mixed passages where the pronoun and the access pattern conflict.
The candidate treats grammar and usage items as 'what sounds right,' choosing the option that matches casual speech, or overcorrecting toward formal-sounding constructions that are actually ungrammatical (e.g., 'between you and I').
Candidates rely on auditory intuition rather than identifying the grammatical function of the tested element; hypercorrection arises because formal register feels safer, and prescriptive folklore ('never end with a preposition') reinforces it.
What to do instead
Adopt a function-first procedure: locate the tested word, name its grammatical role (subject, object of preposition, subject complement), then apply the case or agreement rule. Build a personal list of the ten most common hypercorrections and rationalize each with its rule, not its sound.
In literary analysis prompts, the candidate summarizes plot and theme ('the story shows that love conquers all') instead of analyzing how a specific device-imagery, structure, diction, symbol-produces meaning, and quotes without commenting on the quoted language.
Summary is the default mode from years of book reports, and candidates fear that close reading will omit the 'big picture' the prompt seems to want; they also mistake identifying a device for analyzing its effect.
What to do instead
Force the formula 'device → specific textual detail → effect on the reader → contribution to theme' for every paragraph. Ban plot verbs (happens, then, decides) from analysis drafts and replace each quote with a sentence explaining what the chosen words accomplish that a paraphrase would not.
The candidate misassigns literary periods and movements, attributing Romantic features (elevated nature imagery, individual emotion) to a Neoclassical or Victorian text, or treating 'Modernism' and 'Postmodernism' as interchangeable labels for any twentieth-century work.
Period labels are often learned as mood words rather than as historically dated responses to prior movements; without a timeline of what each movement reacted against, candidates pattern-match on surface features like nature imagery or fragmentation.
What to do instead
Build a one-page timeline pairing each period with its dates, its core assumptions about art and self, and what it reacted against (e.g., Romanticism c. 1798–1832 against Neoclassical rationalism; Modernism c. 1910–1945 against Victorian realism and certainty). For each period, memorize two signature formal traits and two representative authors, then classify unfamiliar excerpts by trait rather than by mood.
On writing-process items, the candidate selects 'prewriting' or 'editing' for a described classroom activity based on the label's connotations rather than on the actual cognitive work-for example, calling peer response 'editing' or calling an outline 'drafting.'
The stages are often remembered as a rigid sequence with fuzzy boundaries, and everyday usage of 'editing' (fixing errors) collides with the composition-studies distinction between revising for content and editing for conventions.
What to do instead
Memorize stage definitions by their purpose and product: prewriting generates and organizes ideas with no polished text; drafting produces extended prose with permission to be rough; revising reshapes content, organization, and style; editing corrects conventions; publishing shares with an audience. Classify ten sample activities against these definitions and note the recursion-stages may repeat.
The candidate analyzes media and persuasion items by identifying a technique ('bandwagon,' 'loaded language') but cannot explain the mechanism by which it works or evaluate the evidence quality in an argument, so answers that require judgment about reasoning are answered with labels only.
Rhetorical and media-literacy vocabulary is easy to memorize as a list, and candidates stop at recognition; exam items increasingly ask for the effect of a technique on an audience or for the difference between a claim, evidence, and an assumption.
What to do instead
For each persuasive technique, write one sentence on the psychological or logical mechanism it exploits (e.g., bandwagon reduces perceived risk by implying consensus). For argument passages, explicitly label claim, evidence, warrant, and unstated assumption, then ask whether the evidence would convince a skeptic. Practice on short op-ed excerpts.
When asked to interpret a student's running-record or miscue data, the candidate counts total errors and calls the student 'struggling' without distinguishing error types (semantic, syntactic, graphophonic) or noticing whether meaning was preserved.
Candidates without a reading-endorsement background treat all deviations from print as equivalent errors; the exam expects analysis of cueing systems and of whether a substitution is meaning-preserving or meaning-changing.
What to do instead
Learn to code miscues by cueing system and by semantic acceptability. Practice with sample transcripts: mark each substitution as semantically acceptable or not, identify which cue system the reader over-relied on, and match the finding to an instructional focus (e.g., meaning-preserving substitutions signal over-reliance on context and need graphophonic support).
The candidate answers questions about the history and structure of English by applying spelling-based intuitions-assuming 'silent' letters are errors, that English spelling is unsystematic, or that all irregular past tenses are exceptions to be memorized without pattern.
Schooling often presents English orthography as chaotic and irregular forms as arbitrary, so candidates lack the etymological and morphological framework (layers of Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, and Latin/Greek vocabulary; the three-tier model) that explains spelling and word formation.
What to do instead
Study the three-layer model of English vocabulary with examples per layer (Anglo-Saxon 'ask,' French 'question,' Latin 'interrogate') and the principle that spelling preserves morphological and etymological information (sign/signal, photograph/photography). Redo missed items by naming the layer or morpheme rule involved rather than re-memorizing the word.
On assessment items, the candidate confuses reliability with validity or treats a single high-stakes test score as a complete measure of student literacy, and proposes assessment plans built on one instrument rather than multiple measures aligned to standards.
The terms are used loosely in everyday school talk, and test-driven accountability culture encourages equating 'test' with 'assessment'; candidates then default to a single summative measure when asked to design or critique an assessment plan.
What to do instead
Anchor the definitions with a slogan: validity asks whether the instrument measures what it claims, reliability asks whether it measures consistently. For any assessment scenario, state the intended learning target, choose a method matched to it (performance task for writing process, rubric-scored discussion for speaking), and justify with at least two measures plus a description of how results would inform instruction.