Keeping Up with the Standards: What One English Professor Learned From Taking Every Standardized Exam in His Discipline

Abstract

During the summer and fall semester 2012, I took on a project to take every standardized exam our English majors take. Thus, I signed up for and took the GRE General Test, the Praxis Content Area Exam (English Language, Literature, and Composition: Content Knowledge), the Senior Major Field Tests in English and Writing, and the GRE Subject Exam in Literature. My goals in taking the exams varied by the exam, but one overriding goal was consistent: I wanted to see what these exams are actually like, so I can help students prepare for them. When students talk to me about graduate school or a career in teaching, they often ask about one of these exams. However, I had not taken either the GRE General or Subject Exam since the mid-1990s, and I had no idea how or how much the exams had changed since then. When students asked about the Praxis, I was forced to draw on what I had heard from colleagues and students who had taken it. In each case, I was at least partially ill-informed, and taking the exams seemed like the best way to truly understand what our students needed to do to prepare for these tests. What I found is that changes to the GRE General Exam make it much more reflective of the type of thinking required in graduate school, while both the Subject Exam and Praxis have not kept pace with changes in English graduate studies or high and middle school teaching, respectively.