All college-bound students in Texas are required to take the TSI (Texas Success Initiative) exam before they can sign up for credit-bearing college courses unless they hold exempt status.
The TSI exam includes three subject tests in the academic areas of Reading, Writing, and Mathematics.
In this post, we take a closer look at what’s on the TSI Reading section and provide links to free TSI Reading practice tests.
Exempt status
Students with a military background and those who attained sufficient scores on the SAT, ACT, STAAR, or TAKS college-entrance exams, for example, are exempt from having to take the TSI exam.
There are also many colleges and universities in Texas that recognize and accept GED College-Ready and College-Ready PLUS credit scores so students scoring in these ranges on the GED (General Education Development) high school equivalency test may also be exempt.
All public Texas universities and colleges administer the TSI exam as they want to make sure all incoming students will meet the minimum requirements to successfully attend college-level coursework.
Students scoring low on the TSI exam are required to attend remedial Mathematics and/or English courses before they will be allowed to enroll in credit-bearing college programs.
What’s on the TSI Reading test?
The TSI Reading subject test includes some 20-24 multiple-choice questions. The TSI exam is computer-adaptive, meaning the question level is lowered or raised based on the student’s previous answers.
The TSI exam is not timed and there is no passing or failing the exam. Schools use the TSI results to determine if, and which, extra courses are required to allow for a student’s success in college.
The TSI Reading subtest
The TSI (Texas Success Initiative) Reading subtest includes around 20-24 questions that measure a student’s proficiency in four main content fields.
These four main content fields cover:
- Literary Analysis – This section assesses a student’s capability to identify and analyze the elements and ideas of literary texts.
- Main Idea & Supporting Details – This part measures how well a student can identify a passage’s main idea, and comprehend textual information provided in a text.
- Making Inferences – In this section, a student’s capability is measured to synthesize ideas by making comparisons or connections between passages, and how well he can make an appropriate inference on a single passage.
- Author’s Language Use – In this section, the test measures to what extent a student can identify the purpose of an author, what tone is used, what organization or rhetorical schemes or strategies the author used, and what proof or evidence was used. What’s also assessed is to what extent a student can determine word meanings in context.
Usually, students need to read a passage and choose the correct or the best answer to a question. Students should answer the questions based on the things, opinions, or facts implied or stated in the passage.