Evidence-based strategies, clear plans, and smart practice that fit your life.
Reading opens the TEAS: 45 questions in 55 minutes, which is about 73 seconds each. That sounds generous until you meet a 600-word passage with four questions attached and realise you have spent four minutes before answering anything.
The three content areas
- Key ideas and details. Main idea, supporting detail, inference, summarising, following a multi-step set of directions.
- Craft and structure. Author purpose, point of view, text structure, word meaning in context, fact against opinion.
- Integration of knowledge and ideas. Comparing two sources, reading a graphic or a label, evaluating an argument, using an index or a table of contents.
Read the question first
For any passage with questions attached, read the questions before the passage. You then read with a target instead of reading for general comprehension and going back. This alone typically saves ten to fifteen minutes across the section, which is the difference between finishing and guessing the last six.
The question types that cost the most time
Following directions. You get a set of instructions, often a recipe, a dosage schedule or an assembly sequence, and a question about what happens at step four. Do not model the whole thing in your head. Find step four.
Two-source comparison. Two short passages, then a question about where they agree or differ. Read the question, then scan only for the claim it names.
Graphics and labels. Nutrition labels, bus timetables, maps with a legend, simple bar charts. These are quick marks if you go straight to the axis or the legend, and slow ones if you try to absorb the whole graphic first.
Vocabulary in context. The word almost always has a common meaning and a less common one, and the passage is using the less common one. If the obvious answer feels obvious, reread the sentence.
Fact against opinion, which people get wrong
A statement is a fact if it can be verified, not if it is true. "The heart has four chambers" is a fact. "The heart is the most important organ" is an opinion, even though you might agree. Watch for judgement words: best, should, most important, unfortunately.
A timing method for the section
Check the clock at question 15 and question 30. You want roughly 37 minutes left at 15, and roughly 18 minutes left at 30. If you are behind at either checkpoint, start answering the single-question items first and leave the long passages for last. An unanswered question scores zero; a rushed guess on a four-option question does not.
Practise the way the section runs
Reading is first, so you sit it fresh. That makes untimed practice especially misleading: it feels easy, and then on the day the clock changes how you read. Practise in timed blocks of 45 questions, in one sitting, with the same rule you will have on the day, which is that you cannot return to the section once it closes.
Once the section is comfortable, move to the part most people underprepare: the Science section and its anatomy and physiology half.