Nursing is a high-demand, but competitive field. Candidates for nursing school are evaluated on a number of factors, including their performance on the Test of Essential Academic Skills (TEAS). This standardized admission test assesses a candidate's skills in reading, math, science, and English and language usage.
The TEAS Prep 1 course will prepare you to sit for the Reading and English Language Usage portions of the TEAS exam. This hands-on course includes focused content, videos, discussion questions, flashcards, test prep tips, and practice test questions. You will learn to identify topic sentences, recognize the different forms of an argument, determine the author's purpose, evaluate the point of view of a text, and examine conventions of English spelling and vocabulary. You will also identify your learning style and learn useful test-taking strategies to fully prepare for the exam.
By course completion, you will be ready to conquer the TEAS Reading and English Language Usage section.
Elizabeth Katrancha has worked in nursing education, case management, and long-term acute care (LTAC) and as an emergency room nurse at a level 1 trauma center.
She has been published in the Journal of School Nursing, MedSurg, Continuing Education in Nursing, Geriatric Nursing and the Journal of Trauma Nursing. She earned her DNP as an adult medical-surgical clinical nurse specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, MSN (nursing education) at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, BSN at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, and her Associate of Science in nursing at Mount Aloysius College.
The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.
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Lesson 1
Details and Reading Critically
For the TEAS exam, it's important to be able to read paragraphs with a critical mind and indicate the main idea. In this lesson, you'll be shown the secrets of dissecting a piece of writing, so that you can name the topic, give the main idea, show the support given for that main idea, infer a conclusion, eliminate all irrelevant data, and put everything you've learned into your own words so that you can help others explain that idea. By questioning what you read now, you will have a trained eye ready for the challenge of the exam!
Sequences, Reading, Graphics, and Types of Printed Communication
In this lesson, you'll learn how to follow a given set of directions, identify specific information from printed communication, identify information from a graphic representation, and recognize events in a sequence. All of these skills are important and are ones that people use in their daily lives from cooking, to performing medical procedures, to taking exams.
Fact Finding and Persuasive Writing
In this lesson, you'll learn to recognize whether an author is stating an opinion or fact. You'll explore tone in writing and identify different modes of presenting the same argument. The importance of choosing the right words and phrasings, as well as how to find appropriate vocabulary definitions, is also covered. During the TEAS exam, there will be readings where an author presents a point of view. You'll want to be able to identify the point of view and isolate it from the facts that surround it.
Intent and Fact Checking
Here, you'll learn to identify the author's purpose in a text, evaluate the point of view in a text, and identify the most common text features. Keep in mind, just because someone says it is a fact, doesn't mean it is true; and even if it is a fact, it doesn't mean that the fact is relevant to the argument at hand. On the TEAS exam, you will need to be able to read paragraphs of information with opinions disguised as facts and understand what areas are factual and relevant to the thesis.
Deciphering and Evaluating Knowledge
In this lesson, you'll review different types of research, infer evidence from the text, and compare and contrast different themes found in writing. You'll also focus on evaluating an argument using textual analysis and examinations of multiple forms of data. On the TEAS exam, you will have to read text passages and provide synthesis on the passages. You'll will also have to identify themes and different levels of research with their applications and implications in a study. Then, you will have to evaluate those sources given for their strength, validity, and their relevance. This lesson will provide you with many opportunities to practice your skills in these areas.
Spelling and Punctuation
In the English language, spelling and punctuation rules can be a challenge for even the most advanced of learners. In this lesson, you'll cover the "guidelines" of the English language and the exceptions to those guidelines. You'll also learn about words that sound or are spelled the same. The best way to improve your spelling and punctuation is to practice and to read. By reading every day, you will expand your vocabulary and your familiarity with English conventions. And, reading will help you prepare for the TEAS exam!
Sentence Structures and Parsing
In this lesson, you'll identify patterns of sentence structures. You'll learn about the eight parts of speech and how to parse, or break down, a sentence into its component words. By understanding the components of a sentence—and being able to parse those components—you will learn the tools that will take you one step closer to passing your TEAS exams. These tools can be applied to all of your critical readings and in your own writing.
Grammar and Formal Language
The TEAS exam will examine your ability to find fault with writing samples. The example might be an entire paragraph where you will have to find the one area of writing that has an issue. By focusing on the sentence structures, you will be able to dissect paragraphs into their smaller components. By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to identify grammar issues in writing. You'll also be able to identify informal language such as colloquialisms and slang and compare it to a more formal language structure.
The Writing Process
Here, you'll explore the elements of the writing process—including a closer look at pre-writing—and evaluate the process when applied to creating paragraphs. Instead of focusing on whether a paragraph is complete, you'll examine the paragraph to make sure it is complete and if it is logical. Then, you'll review citations and indicate when and where they are needed and what the basics are when reading a citation. The TEAS exam will have you review several types of writing. By practicing these types of writing, you are learning by doing and that will help you understand the techniques needed to examine writing from the inside-out.
Context Clues
Being able to understand what you've read, even though you might not understand all of the words, is an essential skill to have for both the TEAS exam and the job field. In this lesson, you'll identify context clues to find the meaning of a passage when your own understanding of a word or phrase is limited. You'll also examine tone and how an improper tone can be devastating in the medical field.
Analyzing Word Parts
The medical profession has a rich body of terminology that you will need to know for the TEAS exam and for the profession in general. In this lesson, you will learn the meanings of certain common affixes in the medical profession and how to best guess the meaning of a word by knowing the affix and how that affix changes a word. This is a crucial component in studying for the TEAS exam, and it is one where you will need to incorporate a lot of memorization techniques in order to fully grasp the terminology presented.
Preparing for the TEAS Exam
In this lesson, you will learn strategies that will help you prepare for the reading and English language usage portions of the TEAS exam. You will be exposed to different learning styles and identify your own learning style. Finally, you will have the chance to test the skills you learned by completing questions like the ones you will see on the TEAS exam. This lesson will be essential to increasing your chance to score a passing mark on the TEAS exam.
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