PSAE Reading

1. PSAE Reading WorkKeys Reading for Information Assessment

2. What does reading for information mean? • Reading and understanding work-related instructions and policies • Reading procedural text not explanatory or narrative text you usually encounter in reading and literature classes • The content may not be easy to read or clearly written

3. Skill Tested: Choosing Main Ideas or Details • Select the important information and supporting details from a written text • Workplace documents are not organized with topic sentences and concluding sentences, so you need to be able to use other clues than placement to identify main ideas and important details.

4. Skill Tested: Understanding Word Meanings • Basic vocabulary necessary • Use context clues within the text to determine word meanings of more difficult words • Work-related terms, technical terminology, and words with multiple meanings are used increasingly as the contexts become more complex

5. Skill Tested: Applying Instructions • You have to be able to understand sequence of instructions and to make inferences from instructions. • As the levels increase in difficulty, the instructions contain more steps and conditions are added. • At lower levels, employees need only apply instructions to clearly described situations • At higher levels, employees must apply instructions to less similar and, eventually, to new situations.

6. Skill Tested: Applying Information and Reasoning • You have to be able to apply information given in workplace communications to similar or new situations, to predict consequences of certain actions, and to understand reasoning, which may or may not be stated, behind a policy.

7. WorkKeys Reading • 33 questions • 45-minute time limit • Several questions may be grouped together and relate to a single piece of reading material • The texts include memos, letters, directions, signs, notices, bulletins, policies, and regulations. • There are five skill levels, from Level 3 to Level 7. As you move from Level 3 to Level 7, both the materials and the tasks become more complex.