Education Exam Prep

Education Exam Prep

By Ran Chen, EA, CFP®EducationHow ToCourses
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Education Exam Prep episodes

  • ParaPro Exam Prep 46, Sentence Structure — Fragments, Run-ons, and Types
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - A complete sentence requires a subject, a verb, and a complete thought; fragments are missing one of these elements.
    - Run-on sentences incorrectly join two independent clauses, either with no punctuation (fused) or just a comma (comma splice).
    - The three ways to fix a run-on sentence are by using a period, a semicolon, or a comma with a FANBOYS conjunction (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).
    - To distinguish between sentence types: simple (one independent clause), compound (two+ independent clauses), complex (one independent + one dependent), and compound-complex (two+ independent + one+ dependent).
    - A common exam trap is confusing a correctly structured complex sentence with a run-on; length does not equal error.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • ParaPro Exam Prep 45, Capitalization Rules
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - How to distinguish between a general direction (e.g., 'drove south') and a capitalized geographic region (e.g., 'the South').
    - Why seasons like 'winter' are lowercase, while months and holidays like 'December' and 'Thanksgiving' are capitalized.
    - The rule for capitalizing titles: only when they appear directly before a name, such as 'President Lincoln', but not when they stand alone.
    - The MINTS mnemonic (Months, I, Names, Titles, Start of sentence) to recall key capitalization rules quickly on the ParaPro exam.
    - How to correctly capitalize the major words in titles of books, articles, and other creative works.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • ParaPro Exam Prep 44, Punctuation — Commas, Semicolons, and Apostrophes
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - The four primary rules for using commas correctly in sentences.
    - How to use a semicolon to join related independent clauses and to separate complex list items.
    - The difference between using apostrophes for singular and plural possession.
    - How to avoid the most common exam trap: confusing the contraction 'it's' with the possessive pronoun 'its'.
    - A simple mental shortcut to correctly choose between 'it's' and 'its' on the ParaPro exam.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • ParaPro Exam Prep 43, Verb Tense and Consistency
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - How the ParaPro Assessment tests verb tense through sentence correction and error identification.
    - The importance of maintaining verb tense consistency within sentences and paragraphs to avoid logical errors.
    - How to correctly use perfect tenses, especially the past perfect, to show the sequence of past events.
    - The critical difference between the commonly confused irregular verbs 'lie' (to recline) and 'lay' (to place).
    - How to recognize common irregular verb forms that frequently appear as incorrect answer choices on the exam.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • ParaPro Exam Prep 42, Modifiers — Misplaced and Dangling
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - A modifier must be placed directly next to the word it describes to avoid confusion.
    - A misplaced modifier incorrectly describes the wrong noun that is present in the sentence.
    - A dangling modifier describes a noun that is completely missing from the sentence.
    - On the ParaPro exam, look for introductory '-ing' phrases to spot potential dangling modifiers.
    - Use the 'Point to the Doer' technique to quickly check if a modifying phrase logically connects to the sentence's subject.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    3 min
  • ParaPro Exam Prep 41, Pronouns — Case, Agreement, and Reference
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - A simple trick to solve pronoun case questions involving compound subjects or objects, such as 'he and I' versus 'him and me'.
    - Why the phrase 'between you and me' is always grammatically correct and 'between you and I' is a frequent exam trap.
    - The critical rule that indefinite pronouns like 'each' and 'everybody' are always singular and require singular pronouns like 'his or her'.
    - How to identify ambiguous pronoun reference errors, where a pronoun could refer to more than one noun, making a sentence incorrect.
    - That pronoun case, agreement, and reference are heavily tested concepts within the Writing Skills and Knowledge domain of the ParaPro Assessment.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • ParaPro Exam Prep 40, Subject-Verb Agreement
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - How to identify the true subject of a sentence when it's separated from the verb by a prepositional phrase.
    - Why indefinite pronouns like 'each,' 'everybody,' and 'anyone' are always singular and how this is tested on the ParaPro exam.
    - The specific verb agreement rules for compound subjects joined by 'and' versus those joined by 'or/nor.'
    - The correct way to handle collective nouns such as 'team' or 'class' in the context of American English exam standards.
    - A simple mnemonic device to remember that pronouns ending in 'one,' 'body,' or 'thing' take singular verbs.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • ParaPro Exam Prep 39, Parts of Speech
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - How to identify the eight essential parts of speech tested on the ParaPro exam.
    - The critical role of context in determining a word's function in a sentence.
    - A common exam trap involving words like 'fast' that can be either an adjective or an adverb.
    - How to differentiate between adjectives and adverbs that both end in '-ly'.
    - A memorable mnemonic to recall all eight parts of speech during your test.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    3 min
  • ParaPro Exam Prep 38, Statistics — Mean, Median, Mode, Range, and Probability
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - How to calculate and distinguish between mean, median, and mode for the ParaPro exam.
    - The critical difference between measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and a measure of spread (range).
    - How outliers affect the mean and why the median is often a better measure for skewed data.
    - How to solve fundamental probability problems often presented in classroom scenarios on the test.
    - To identify common exam traps, such as forgetting to order data before finding the median or misinterpreting range.
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min
  • ParaPro Exam Prep 37, Data — Tables, Charts, and Graphs
    This podcast is made by Ran Chen, who holds an EA license, Insurance and Securities licenses (Series 6, 63, 65), and the CFP® designation. He is passionate about opening access to high-quality exam preparation resources and helping learners prepare more effectively for professional certification exams.
    In this episode you will learn:
    - How to interpret common data displays like bar graphs, line graphs, and pie charts on the ParaPro exam.
    - The critical importance of always reading the title, axes, labels, and scale before answering a question.
    - A common exam trap involving pictographs and the necessity of checking the key for symbol values.
    - How to identify misleading information, such as a truncated y-axis on a bar graph.
    - A simple mnemonic to remember when to use each type of graph: "Compare with a Bar, change over a Line, and a piece of the Pie."
    For more free exam prep tools, practice questions, and AI-powered explanations, visit https://open-exam-prep.com/ or YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Open-exam-prep
    4 min

About Education Exam Prep

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Education Exam Prep is a free, daily podcast by OpenExamPrep covering the most in-demand teacher licensure and education certification exams — including Praxis Core, Praxis Subject Assessments (Math,…