WEST-B study guide
WEST-B · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Washington Educator Skills Tests – Basic Skills, commonly called the WEST–B, is the basic-skills testing program for candidates preparing to enter educator preparation programs and the Washington educator workforce. It is organized into three separate subtests - Reading, Writing, and Mathematics - each treated as its own testing event on the official WEST program website. The site's announcement archive notes that free interactive practice tests are available for the WEST–B: Reading, Writing, and Mathematics subtests, which makes them the most direct way to see the kinds of tasks each subtest presents before you register. Beyond that, the program's Preparation Materials section points candidates to full-length practice tests, expanded study guides, and a test preparation video, and the Tests section carries the field-by-field details for each subtest. Topics on this exam: Reading, Writing, and Mathematics. The WEST-B study guide has 3 sections and about 936 words.
01Reading: Main Idea, Inference, and Purpose
Reading items fall into a few predictable families: main idea and summary, detail retrieval, inference, vocabulary in context, author's purpose and tone, text structure, and evaluation of an argument. Name the family before you answer, because each one has a different rule for choosing between two plausible options.
330 words, about 2 min02Writing: Sentence Boundaries, Usage, and Revision
Most Writing items test one of three structural errors: fragments (a word group without an independent clause), run-ons (two independent clauses fused with no punctuation), and comma splices (two independent clauses joined by only a comma). Fix run-ons and splices with a period, a semicolon, or a comma plus a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).
306 words, about 2 min03Mathematics: Percents, Algebra, Geometry, and Data
Expect fractions, decimals, percents, ratios, proportions, and signed-number arithmetic, often embedded in word problems. Convert everything to one form before computing.
300 words, about 2 min