Foundations of Reading

Sample Foundations of Reading Questions

Preparing for your exam? Look at the foundations of reading sample questions below. You will see the correct answers after each one.

Question 1

1. Which of the following strategies would probably be the most effective in promoting a student’s interest in reading outside of school?

A. Tell the student’s parents to give the child special privileges whenever they read at home.

B. Encourage students and parents to read together at home, whenever possible, and then discussing each chapter. 

C. Tell parents to make the amount of time that their child can spend on their phone each day contingent upon reading a chapter from a particular book first.

D. Have students keep a record of what they have read at home and incorporate this amount into their grade for the course.

The correct answer is B. Like many childhood behaviors, reading will be best reinforced if the child has a positive role model who reads.

Question 2

2. Which of the following is the most important reason why a fifth-grade teacher should assign reading from high-quality newspapers into the class’s reading instruction?

A. Reading varieties of different texts and genres will help students understand the intricacies of various types of texts. 

B. Students will be better able to focus on syntax and grammar in journalistic writings.

C. Reading various texts enhances students’ phonological awareness and development.

D. Typical children’s reading materials tend to focus mainly on reading comprehension skills.

The correct answer is A. Exposing children to different types of texts, especially those that a student will later encounter in daily life, such as newspapers, is extremely beneficial.

Question 3

3. While reading a story book to a group of students, the teacher points to the beginning consonants of certain words and accentuates their sounds. This practice is most likely intended to develop:

A. the students’ knowledge of the sequence of letters in the alphabet.

B. the students’ understanding of how sounds are combined in various words

C. the students’ awareness of how syllables are formed in words.

D. the students’ ability to isolate particular sounds in certain words. 

The correct answer is D. Pointing to the letters in this way will help the child to associate the letter with the sound it makes.

Question 4

4. When teaching beginning readers in the early stages of elementary school, which of the following activities would be most important to include in each daily lesson?

A. Activities that are dedicated to memorizing the spelling of particular words.  

B. Activities that emphasize listening to and repeating rhyming sounds.

C. Activities that promote the phonetic decoding and analysis of words.

D. Activities that analyze syntax and sentence construction.

The correct answer is C. Practice with phonetic decoding will help students to be able to sound out new unknown words that they may encounter in the future.

Question 5

A sixth-grade teacher gives students students two brief newspaper articles by two different authors on a current, topical issue and asks them to identify the authors’ points of view and how the points of view are supported by the texts.

What skill is the teacher focusing on?

A. identifying influences upon an author

B. determining the main idea of a text

C. evaluating the effectiveness of argumentative writing

D. teaching new vocabulary in context

The correct answer is C. The articles are on current, topical issues and the students are presented with two differing viewpoints. Since the issues are topical, we can assume that the writing style is argumentative. By asking students to identify support within the text, the teacher is on the way to showing students how to make a piece of argumentative writing effective.

Question 6

A teacher has observed that students who are reluctant to read aloud generally have a limited understanding of descriptive texts. Which of the following could explain this phenomenon?

A. Students phonics skills are restricting their reading comprehension.

B. These students are having difficulties focusing on how to decode a text on a word-by-word basis.

C. The students have more limited metacognitive abilities than their peers.

D. The teacher has not devoted enough time to teaching phonetics to these young readers.

The correct answer is B. Just as a text is read aloud by reciting each word, the text is also comprehended by decoding and understanding the words.

Question 7

Which of the following would best evaluate the vocabulary skills of elementary-school readers?

A. giving students a reading miscue test

B. administering a standardized exam, assessing vocabulary development

C. showing students sets of flashcards with words on them

D. having students read aloud to check pronunciation

The correct answer is B. The vocabulary skills should be isolated for testing. While the flashcards and reading would minimally assess vocabulary development, the standardized exam is most effective since it would have been statistically validated for effectiveness with students.

Question 8

What is the most important reason for giving an informal reading inventory (IRI)?

A. to check students’ vocabulary levels

B. to compare silent reading comprehension to that of reading aloud

C. to determine whether a student’s knowledge of syntax improves their understanding of semantics

D. to check students’ frustration reading levels

The correct answer is D. Reading texts that are inordinately frustrating will not help students learn. In addition, the teacher should also assess the children’s independent and instructional reading levels.

Question 9

A first-grade teacher shows students everyday, household objects. She then asks them to say the word for the object and isolate the initial sound. What is the primary purpose of this task?

A. to develop students phonemic awareness

B. to help students guess the meaning of new vocabulary

C. to assist students’ pronunciation of one-syllable words

D. to help students gain more autonomy in their learning

The correct answer is A. Isolating sounds in this way will help students identity the sounds of particular phonemes and will improve their phonemic awareness.

Question 10

The ability to learn the blending of phonemes helps to improve reading skills because:

A. it helps with the recognition of sight words

B. it primarily supports vocabulary improvement

C. it helps students to decode words

D. students will learn which words rhyme with others

The correct answer is C. Students will learn to use letter-sound correspondence in order to decode words in this way.

Go to the reading comprehension quiz

What’s included on the exam?

You will need to know various pedagogical concepts related to teaching the skills of reading.

This includes things like understanding a student’s phonological awareness. In addition, you will need to understand how learners mentally process parts of words like syllables and phonemes.

Prospective teachers will also need to be aware of the difficulties that learners face, as well as strategies for solving them.

For example, you could emphasize spelling or orally sounding out words for learners who struggle with vocabulary or pronunciation.

Note – We are not the official website:

The Foundations of Reading exam is a trademark of NES Inc., which is neither affiliated with nor endorses this website.

Official Practice Test Materials