Practice Materials

EQAO has made lots of blank test booklets, previous test materials, and scoring guides available online. You can find some of them here to help you prepare. We've also made some available for you on the Past Exams page and on the Scoring Guides page.

For more practice materials, take a look at what EQAO has made available online. There's blank past exams, as well as scoring guides and sample answers.

How to Use the Practice Materials

  1. Use one of the blank exams from the Past Exams page (or this page or the EQAO online resource bank) and pick a task.
  2. Complete the task you picked by reading the selection and answering the questions, or by writing out the full answer (for tips on how to write answer multiple choice questions, the short answer questions, the news report, or the series of paragraphs/opinion essay, see any of these pages or the Writing page).
  3. Take a look at the Item-Specific Rubric for whatever item you chose. Make sure you pick the Scoring Guide/Rubric from the same year as the practice booklet you chose.
  4. After reviewing the rubric, revise your own answer now that you know what the test is looking for.
  5. After revising, look at some of the example responses and figure out why they got the mark that they did (there are explanations that go with each example).
  6. Once you've looked at some examples, mark your own answer. Figure out what code (i.e. level/mark) it would score based on the rubrics.

Interactive Practice Tool: Read. Write. Rock!

For an interactive practice tool, take a look at Read. Write. Rock! (developed by the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board). It's a website that will walk you through the writing and reading tasks on the OSSLT and provide you with interactive activities to help improve your writing, as well as practice opportunities.

Question and Answer Booklets

You'll get two booklets: one with the questions and reading selections, and another where you write your answers. You get a new set of booklets during each 75-minute session

2015: Booklet 1

osslt-practice-test-booklet1-question.pdf
osslt-practice-test-booklet1-answer.pdf

2015: Booklet 2

osslt-practice-test-booklet2-question.pdf
osslt-practice-test-booklet2-answer.pdf

Study and Preparation Guides from EQAO

The Getting Ready Guide

This document gives you a good survey of what's on the OSSLT, what tasks are on the test, some tips for writing the test, and answers to frequently asked questions.

This document is a good place to start if you're not sure what you should work on first, since it gives an overview of the whole test.

There are no practice materials in this guide.

You can find this guide and more on EQAO's website.

getting-ready-guide-osslt.pdf
planning-preparation-guide-osslt.pdf

The Planning and Preparation Guide

This guide is more in-depth than the Getting Ready Guide. It goes into more detail about the kinds of things you'll have to read and write on the OSSLT, and it gives a more technical breakdown of the exact skills the test is evaluating.

It also has some sample test materials and some example questions.

You can find this guide and more on EQAO's website.