Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test
(OSSLT)


 

Next School Year the OSSLT will take place March 2007.
 
The test will be written on 1 day (not 2 days like in the past) consisting of two 75- minute booklets.
The OSSLT tests the skills acquired up to the end of the grade 9 curriculum.
Multiple choice questions are answered on a separate answer sheet.
5 Types of Reading Selections including:
 
  • Information Paragraph -- 200-220 words
  • News Report -- 200- 220 words
  • Dialogue (a narrative containing dialogue) - 225 words
  • Real-Life Narrative (biography) - 600 words
  • Graphic Text - 100 - 150 words
Reading Questions involve:
  • Multiple Choice answers
  • Open-response answers (6 line answers) to be answers in FULL SENTENCES
*Open questions responses include the assessment of the skills formerly assessed through the summary and information paragraphs.

**Spelling and grammar do not count so long as errors do no interfere with the message.
4 Types of Writing Activities including:
 
  • Multiple Choice questions testing writing skills (i.e., organization of ideas, sentence and paragraph structure, language conventions, use of capitalization & punctuation.
  • Short writing task (6 line answers)
  • Longer writing tasks:
             +  News Report (1 page)
             +  Series of Paragraphs Expressing an Opinion (2 pages)

    *There is no explicit summary or info paragraph.
    Results are reported as pass/fail
SAMPLE TEST BOOKLETS— the EQAO released this sample booklet to give students a basic idea of what is expected from them on the test. It is expected that students will finish a similar booklet in 60 minutes. Visit :http://www.eqao.com/Students/Secondary/10/10.aspx?Lang=E&gr=10&Aud=Students&App=Students for the sample booklets
 
Please visit www.eqao.com and follow the "Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test" for more details.
 
Questions? Comments? This page is maintained by Jennifer Bell, Student Success/Literacy Resource Teacher, Maple HS

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