Best practices and transitions

The Praxis contains relatively few questions that directly ask you to define words, but vocabulary can still be a determining factor for your score because you need to understand the reading passages and answer choices. The most difficult vocabulary on the Praxis appears in the reading passages, the hardest of which are excerpts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Other categories of words are also important: academic jargon, scientific terminology, tone and mood words, and literary forms.

Best practices

• Don’t look at the answer choices. Instead, read the passage and fill in the blank with your own word. Then, select the answer choice that has the same meaning as the word you thought of.
• Never assume that the word you don’t know is the answer unless you know that all the other answer choices are wrong.
• Always read contextually. Many English words have multiple meanings, so it helps to think broadly about how a meaning might be applied. Two “weather” words, temperate and inclement are good examples.

“We live in a temperate climate.” Here, temperate means “mild, without extremes in temperature.” Similarly, the sentence “Mary had a temperate disposition” means that Mary has a calm disposition and is not prone to violent extremes of emotion.

Similarly, when “inclement weather” is forecast, most people understand that the weather will be windy, wet, and possibly dangerous. However, when we hear that “The president granted clemency to thirty-three people this month,” we know that clemency means “mercy” rather than “sunny weather" and means that thirty-three people will be released from prison.

• Answer choices that contain extreme language such as always, never, or completely are generally wrong. Most correct answers are more nuanced and middle-of-the-road.
• Trust your gut about what words mean. Most people have a passive vocabulary–words they know in context, but generally don’t use themselves–of about twenty thousand words. However, their active vocabulary–words in daily use–is only about between two and five thousand, depending on which source you consult. When you get a gut feeling that a given word means X, you’re actually drawing on your passive vocabulary. So trust the feeling and don’t switch your answer without an actual reason for doing so.

Transition words

Transition words tell us how the ideas in a sentence or paragraph connect to one another. Continuers, contrast words, cause-and-effect, sequence words, and even sentence structure can all provide you with important context clues that can help you determine the meanings of words you don’t know, whether those words are in the passage you’re reading or in the answer choices.

Continuers

When these words appear in a sentence or passage, they indicate that you are looking for something that is a synonym, a restatement, or a logical addition to what’s being said.

For example:

For five years after Robespierre’s downfall, France struggled economically while also trying to conduct several wars, including against the British.

Here, adding the fact of fighting wars to France’s economic struggle helps readers understand the extent of France’s difficulties.

The sentence could also be written this way:

France struggled after Robespierre’s downfall, not only because of its economic difficulties but also because it was conducting several wars, including against the British.

Notice that both sentences provide the same information even though they are worded differently.

Here’s a more difficult passage.

Edith Wharton’s introduction to her novel Ethan Frome concludes as follows:

“These primary aims, the only ones that can be explicitly stated, must, by the artist, be almost instinctively felt and acted upon before there can pass into his creation that imponderable something which causes life to circulate in it, and preserves it for a little from decay.”

In other words, the artist’s “primary aims” must be “felt and acted upon,” before they for characters to come to life. The “imponderable something” that makes characters seem alive to readers “causes life to circulate in it” and “preserves it for a little from decay.”

Contradictors

Contradictors are words or phrases that indicate that the passage includes a contrast.

For example:

Although our path led through dark tunnels and over hazardous mountains, we persevered.

Or

Our path led through dark tunnels and over hazardous mountains, yet we persevered.

Or

We persevered despite the long tunnels and hazardous mountains that lay in our path.

In each of these sentences, the perseverance contrasts with the difficulty of the path to suggest that the speaker was determined and/or tough enough to survive.

Here’s a test-level example from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre found at Project Gutenberg. Jane is waiting for a chance to open a letter.

Here, the contrast phrase fortunately, however is easy to miss because it occurs near the end of the passage. It is essential to the meaning of the sentence, however, because it transitions from the list of frustrations Jane faces to her one stroke of good luck.

Cause and effect

Cause and effect continuers establish a relationship or explain why something is happening.

Many of these words can be used interchangeably. These sentences convey the same meaning:

Russia did not industrialize as fast as the rest of Europe did because its vast size made it difficult to travel, communicate, or develop urban centers for industry and manufacturing.

Russia did not industrialize as fast as the rest of Europe did: its vast size made it difficult to travel, communicate, or develop urban centers for industry and manufacturing.

Russia did not industrialize as fast as the rest of Europe did–its vast size made it difficult to travel, communicate, or develop urban centers for industry and manufacturing.

Here’s a harder example from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen and found at Project Gutenberg.:

This passage’s length and vocabulary make it challenging, as does the fact that the cause-and-effect word therefore appears in the middle of the passage, just when a reader’s mind is likely to wander. The contradictor therefore connects the idea of Henry’s wealth (the cause) to his lesser need for income (the effect) and his sisters’ greater need for the Norland estate.