The General Knowledge Test of FTCE

All about the FTCE General Knowledge Test

The FTCE or Florida Teacher Certification Examinations consists of a group of 47 sub-tests that are conducted to assess the candidates on the basis of the knowledge they have in their respective subject areas. There are 42 sub-tests based on specific subject areas, 4 sub-tests on General Knowledge and 1 sub-test on Professional Education in this test. This article will give you useful information about the General Knowledge test. For more information, you can visit the official website at (http://www.fl.nesinc.com/).

The GK test is designed to assess the general education of candidates. There are four basic parts or sub-tests in this examination and these are as follows:

  1. English Language Skills

    You need at least 73% in order to pass this particular sub-test. The total time that you are given to complete it is 40 minutes and the total number of multiple-choice questions in this test is approximately 40.The main areas that are covered under this sub-test are mentioned below:

    • Word choice
    • Correct structure of sentences
    • Spellings, Capitalization and Punctuation
    • Basic Grammar
  2. Reading

    You need to score at least 65% in this sub-test and the total time that will be given to you will be 40 minutes. You will have to solve approximately 40 questions that evaluates you on the basis of these two competencies:

    • Literal Comprehension
    • Inferential Comprehension
  3. Mathematics

    For this section, you are permitted to use a simple 4-function calculator. You need to score a minimum of 58% in this sub-test and the time that you are allotted for answering the questions is 100 minutes. The total number of questions here is around 45 and all these are of the multiple-choice type. The following competencies are evaluated in this sub-test:

    • Geometry and measurement of data
    • Numbers and basic operations between them
    • Spatial sense or three dimensional geometry
    • Data analysis
    • Algebra and basic operations
    • Probability theory

    In order to help you in solving the problems quickly and with more accuracy, you will also be provided a reference sheet that will contain the following useful information:

    • Areas of parallelogram, trapezoid, rectangle and triangle
    • Circumference and area of a circle
    • Volume and surface area of cube, cone, cylinder, prism, sphere and pyramid
    • Pythagoras Theorem of right triangles
    • Distance, mid-point and slope formulas
    • Simple interest formula
    • Conversions between standard and metric units
    • Approximations of the value of pi (∏) in terms of fractions or decimals.
  4. Essay

    Here, you need to score at least 6 out of 12 points for the essay to pass this test. You are given a total time of 50 minutes to write an essay on a given topic. You will be tested on the areas mentioned below:

    • Purpose of writing the essay
    • How well do you state the main idea and corresponding supporting ideas
    • How well do you organize your ideas and premises
    • Whether you are able to demonstrate a strong command over your language
    • Are you able to provide relevant supporting information
    • How well you apply transitions between paragraphs
    • How varied is your knowledge of sentence structure
    • Are you able to present a consistent perspective on a topic
    • Ability to follow the conventions of standard written English

Scoring Information regarding the FTCE General Knowledge Test

You need to pass all the four tests to pass this examination. The test is computer-based and the unofficial scores will be provided to you as soon as the test is finished. The official score reports may take about 4 to 6 weeks from the testing date to be sent to you on your account at the official test website.