BTLPT: Bilingual Target Language Proficiency #190

The length of time you should study depends on your Spanish fluency at an advanced, academic, professional level.

If you can read, write, understand and speak at a high level already, you may only need a few weeks to review bilingual education best practices and the TEKS for your grade level.

If you need to build your academic vocabulary to be able to understand complex informational texts or give a formal presentation to a group of educators, you may need several months.

In my experience, most casual Spanish-speaking candidates can pass the test after 3-4 months of concentrated study (4-6 hours per week), and most highly fluent speakers can pass with 3-4 weeks of study time (3-4 hours per week).

Of course, this will vary depending on your individual needs and educational experience.

In my experience, most candidates who receive a score of zero on the lesson plan failed to teach the exact objective provided in the prompt.

You may have written a plan that teaches something related to the objective or something similar to the objective instead of the exact objective.

You may have only addressed one part of the objective.

Here are some examples to show you what this common mistake might look like:

Scenario 1

Objective: The students will identify the elements of the biography genre.

Lesson Plan: Students use biography to learn about Cesar Chavez and complete activities about his life and contributions. The evaluation is an exit ticket sequencing events from the biography.

Problem: The students learned about one person, not about what elements are included in biographies in general, for example, table of contents, captions, index, etc.

Scenario 2: 

Objective: The students will describe weather patterns.

Lesson Plan: Students keep a weather journal for several days and write about what they like to do in their favorite kind of weather. The evaluation is a labeling activity for different kinds of weather: cloudy, rainy, sunny, etc.

Problem: The lesson taught students how to identify some weather patterns but didn’t teach them to describe the weather patterns or evaluate whether they could describe them.

Get more tips in my guide – How to Write a Lesson Plan to Score 12/12.

First, let me say that I understand how frustrating this is!

You should feel proud that you got so close and only have a little work to do to make it across the 240 mark!

I have heard from dozens of people who applied to have their test rescored and have only learned of two candidates who received one or two additional points as a result.

My suggestion is if you are at risk of losing a year of teaching and have the money to spend, go ahead and have it rescored, but know that it’s a long shot that your score will change.

It’s better to double up on your study efforts with some tutoring and a study guide and then feel confident and pass the BTLPT with a score well above 240 on your next try.

It takes about 3 weeks to receive your results after the test.

They are published at 10 pm on a schedule according to your testing window.

You can find the score report dates here.

You may be able to view whether you pass or fail (but not the score) on the morning of your score report date in your educator TEAL account.

It’s possible, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the same version of the test. According to Pearson, there are multiple versions of each exam.

The best strategy is to focus on being prepared for the general kinds of questions you’ll be asked on the exam instead of preparing to answer specific questions or tasks.

Generally, you’ll need to be able to understand verbal and written information at an advanced level of Spanish and be able to fluently discuss education-related topics with principals, colleagues, or parents.