Study guide
The complete syllabus, taught chapter by chapter.
Single-user licence. You may print this file and write on it. You may not redistribute, resell or post it. © Sitonce 2026.
Study guide, 2026 edition.
Copyright © 2026 Sitonce. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by the single-user licence above.
Preface
The complete syllabus for the Florida Teacher Certification Examinations - General Knowledge Test (082). Read all 4 chapters and you have been taught every one of the 10 subtopics the examiner tests, and the one part of the examination that carries no multiple-choice questions as well.
The next chapter, The exam at a glance, is what makes the rest of this book useful. It says how many questions each topic carries, and the study plan on the page after converts those weights into hours. Two topics carry 65 of 95 marks between them; the lightest carries 30. Time spent should follow that, not the order the chapters happen to be printed in.
Once you have read a chapter, drill on it. 475 practice questions live on the Sitonce website (sitonce.com). They adapt to what you keep getting wrong, keep a notebook of your own mistakes, and explain each miss against the option you actually chose. That adaptation is where the website earns its place; a paper file cannot do it.
When you have worked through the chapters and the practice questions, sit the five mock papers that ship alongside this book. Each carries its answer key at the back of the same file. Sit them the way you will sit the real one - a mock done in pieces over three evenings measures your notes, not your recall.
The exam at a glance
Everything about the exam itself: what it is, how it runs, what it costs, and how it is scored. Read this before you plan your revision.
| Authority | Florida Department of Education |
|---|---|
| Delivered by | Pearson (Evaluation Systems) |
| Format | Four subtests, registered and passed separately: an essay, English Language Skills (30 questions), Reading (30 questions) and Mathematics (35 questions). Delivered at a Pearson test center. |
| Language | English |
| Questions | 95 |
| Time | 195 minutes (245 minute appointment) |
| Sittings | On demand. Book any open Pearson appointment, and take the subtests in any combination you like. |
| Fee | USD 32.50 per subtest - USD 130 for all four (retake USD 32.50 per subtest, after 30 days) |
| Results | Multiple-choice subtests are scored immediately; the essay is rated by two people and takes about four weeks. |
| Validity | A passing subtest score does not expire. You keep it and retake only what you failed. |
| Eligibility | None to sit. The test is required for certification, not gated behind a course.
|
78% is our readiness target, not a published pass mark.
Each subtest of the General Knowledge Test is passed on its own against a scaled score of 200. The Florida Department of Education publishes what that is worth as a percentage of correct answers: 63% for English Language Skills, 70% for Reading, 63% for Mathematics. Those are maximums - a harder form of a subtest may require slightly fewer correct answers. The Essay is scored by two independent raters whose scores are added, and Rule 6A-4.0021 sets the passing total at 6. We teach the Essay in a chapter of its own and we do not mark essays: our questions and scores cover the three multiple-choice subtests. If you fail one subtest you retake only that subtest.
The paper is drawn to fixed weights per topic. This is the arithmetic behind the study plan on the next page:
| Ch. | Topic | Marks | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English Language Skills | 30 | 32% |
| 2 | Reading | 30 | 32% |
| 3 | Mathematics | 35 | 37% |
| 4 | The Essay | 0 | 0% |
| Total | 95 | 100% |
Study plan
The commonest wrong strategy is to spend equal time on every chapter. The paper is not weighted equally; the plan should not be either. The share column below is what matters; the hours column applies a 40-hour reference total for scale.
| Ch. | Chapter | Weight | of 40 h |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English Language Skills | 32% | 13 h |
| 2 | Reading | 32% | 13 h |
| 3 | Mathematics | 37% | 15 h |
| 4 | The Essay | 0% | 1 h |
| Total | 100% | 40 h |
Whatever total time you decide on for this paper, allocate this share of it to each chapter. Pick the total from your own baseline: how many marks you dropped the first time you attempted a mock, and how many hours a week you can give it.
Chapter 1
Thirty questions in forty minutes on the mechanics of written English. Two thirds of them come from one competency - standard English conventions - and that competency is a list of twelve named skills rather than a general test of good writing. A scaled score of 200 passes, and the Department publishes that this is worth at most 63% correct.
By the end of this chapter you will be able to explain:
Rule 6A-4.0021, F.A.C. incorporates the competencies and skills by reference and makes them part of the rule. That is unusual and it works in your favor: the examinable content is a published list rather than a description, and the list is short enough to read in ten minutes.
There are three competencies and nineteen skills. Language structure has four skills, vocabulary application has three, and standard English conventions has twelve. The subtest is thirty questions.
The proportions follow the skill counts. Expect roughly six questions on structure, five on vocabulary and nineteen on conventions. Nothing else is examinable on this subtest, however good a piece of writing advice may be.
Work from the list, not from a general sense of correctness. A candidate who can name which of the twelve conventions skills an item is testing has usually found the error already, because each skill describes exactly one kind of fault.
FTCE General Knowledge: the whole syllabus taught, the questions that test it, 5 timed mocks, and all 6 PDFs to print.