The FTCE English 6–12 examination is Florida’s subject area examination for certification to teach English in grades 6–12 in Florida public schools. It is a computer-based test (CBT) in two independently scored sections that must both be passed: a Multiple-Choice Section (code 131) of approximately 60 multiple-choice questions in 1 hour and 30 minutes, and a Written Performance Section (code 132) of 1 essay in 1 hour. The Multiple-Choice Section requires a scaled score of at least 200; the Written Performance Section requires at least 5 out of 8 total points. The FLDOE/Pearson fee is $150 for both sections.
This program is part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog — join the notify list and we’ll email you when enrollment opens.
What this examination qualifies
The FTCE English 6–12 examination is the subject area examination for the Florida English (6–12) certificate — the credential held by the teachers who staff middle-school and high-school English classrooms across Florida: English I through IV, middle-grade language arts, and the reading, writing, and literature courses built on them. It belongs to the Florida Teacher Certification Examinations (FTCE) program administered for the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE), and it is one component of certification; the Bureau of Educator Certification determines which examinations a given applicant must pass.
That teaching assignment shapes the paper. This is not a literature examination alone, and it is not a pedagogy examination alone. A candidate must command the English language itself at the postsecondary level — grammar, usage, word origins, figurative language — and must also know how literacy is taught: communication and writing processes, literacy instruction, texts across genres and periods, listening, viewing, speaking and presenting, pedagogical practice for English language arts, and assessment used to drive instructional decisions. The written section then asks for something rarer on a certification paper: professional judgement about a student’s writing, exercised in writing.
Two fences belong at the front of this page, because this examination is routinely confused on both. First, the codes: the sections are published as 131 (Multiple-Choice Section) and 132 (Written Performance Section). The number in the official test-page web address is not the examination code, and no page in this program cites it as one. Second, the grade band: FTCE English 6–12 is a separate examination from FTCE Middle Grades English 5–9, which has its own sections and its own framework. Preparation for one does not describe the other, and this program is built to English 6–12 only. PassProfessor’s catalog now includes preparation for this examination as its own program. Its companion, the FTCE English 6–12 Exam Guide at /ftce-english-6-12-exam-guide/, sets out the route, the competencies in full, and the sitting in detail.
The examination at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Examination | FTCE English 6–12 — Multiple-Choice Section, code 131; Written Performance Section, code 132 (Florida Teacher Certification Examinations) |
| Qualification | Subject area examination for certification to teach English in grades 6–12 in Florida public schools; one component of Florida educator certification, with requirements determined by the Bureau of Educator Certification |
| Format | Computer-based test (CBT) in two sections, each independently administered, scored, and reported: Multiple-Choice Section — approximately 60 multiple-choice questions; Written Performance Section — 1 essay. Unused time on one section cannot be used on the other, and once a section is completed and the candidate proceeds, there is no return to it |
| Length | Multiple-Choice Section: 1 hour and 30 minutes. Written Performance Section: 1 hour. Total testing time 2 hours and 30 minutes; total appointment time is longer |
| Content | Multiple-Choice Section — seven competencies: effective use of the English language at the postsecondary level 15%; communication skills, techniques, and processes 18%; literacy processes and instructional practices 15%; a wide range of literary and informational texts 17%; effective techniques for listening, viewing, speaking, and presenting 10%; pedagogical content for teaching English language arts 15%; various assessments and use of assessment data 10%. Written Performance Section — one competency at 100%: ability to evaluate a student’s written analysis of a literary text |
| Passing score | Multiple-Choice Section: A scaled score of at least 200. Written Performance Section: At least 5 out of 8 total points. Both sections must be passed independently to pass the examination |
| Examination fee | FLDOE/Pearson fee: $150 for both sections; $75 for a single section |
| Reference materials | None provided for this test |
| Administrator | Pearson administers the FTCE examinations for the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE). PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with FLDOE or Pearson |
What the examination covers
Multiple-Choice Section — Competency 1: Knowledge of effective use of the English language at the postsecondary level — 15%
The language itself, at college-ready depth. The blueprint examines how English has developed over time — word origins and linguistic, social, religious, historical, and regional influences; standard English grammar, usage, and conventions applied with proficiency; sentence types; reference materials used to settle meaning, pronunciation, part of speech, synonyms, antonyms, and etymology; connotative and denotative meaning read through context and word relationships; word structure through prefixes, roots, suffixes, and Greek and Latin elements; figurative language; and academic and domain-specific vocabulary across disciplines. These are the items on which an English teacher’s own command of the subject is measured before any question of teaching arises.
Multiple-Choice Section — Competency 2: Knowledge and understanding of communication skills, techniques, and processes — 18%
The heaviest single competency on the multiple-choice paper examines writing as a craft and a process: the structures and purposes of narrative, argumentative, and expository forms; techniques for personal and fictional narrative; argument built on claims, valid reasoning, credible evidence, elaboration, and counterclaims; expository writing that explains and analyses information from multiple sources; evidence-based practices for improving writing through planning, revising, and editing; integrating digital media into written texts and digital presentations; and research — refining a question, gathering and synthesising reliable information from primary and secondary sources, and paraphrasing and citing to avoid plagiarism.
Multiple-Choice Section — Competency 3: Knowledge of literacy processes and instructional practices — 15%
This competency examines how reading is understood and taught: quantitative, qualitative, and student-centred methods for analysing text complexity and readability; practices for teaching students to analyse imagery, semantic and syntactic structures, and diction; vocabulary growth through word parts, derivations, and etymology, including commonly used foreign words and expressions; constructing meaning from context, background knowledge, and personal experience; how text structure conveys purpose and meaning; reading proficiency read on the frustration, instructional, and independent continuum; assessing fluency; and instructional practices and technologies that enhance literacy processes.
Multiple-Choice Section — Competency 4: Knowledge of a wide range of literary and informational texts — 17%
The second-heaviest competency examines the texts themselves: how plot, theme, point of view, setting, character, mood, and tone create meaning; a range of texts across genres, authors, and literary periods from classical to present; universal themes across times and places; archetypes and adaptations of mythical, classical, and religious texts; informational text structures and features and how they convey purpose; authors with differing perspectives on the same topic; the support behind a central idea in informational texts, including historical speeches and essays; argumentative texts evaluated for reasoning, rhetoric, and the validity of claims; and literary and rhetorical devices across genres.
Multiple-Choice Section — Competency 5: Knowledge of effective techniques for listening, viewing, speaking, and presenting — 10%
The smallest multiple-choice competency examines the spoken and presented word: collaborative techniques, active-listening skills, and voice and tone in academic discussion; presenting information orally with logical organisation, coherent focus, credible evidence, and rhetorical devices; creating digital presentations with coherent ideas and a clear perspective; and nonverbal cues, vocal qualities, and pacing used to hold an audience’s understanding and engagement.
Multiple-Choice Section — Competency 6: Knowledge of pedagogical content for teaching English language arts — 15%
This competency examines the teaching moves that turn subject knowledge into student learning: evidence-based practices and technologies for developing students’ English language skills and writing skills; guiding students to select and evaluate valid, reliable information from primary and secondary sources; meaningful feedback on student writing; and instructional practices for students’ comprehension and analysis of texts across genres and for their listening, viewing, speaking, and presenting skills.
Multiple-Choice Section — Competency 7: Knowledge of various assessments and use of assessment data to drive instructional decisions within English language arts — 10%
The closing multiple-choice competency examines assessment as an instructional instrument: methods for assessing English language skills, writing at each stage of the writing process, comprehension and analysis across genres, and listening, viewing, speaking, and presenting; analysing formal and informal results to identify strengths and needs and adjust instruction — differentiation, reteaching, scaffolding, small-group work, peer tutoring; measures for reading performance across foundational skills, vocabulary, and comprehension; and appropriate ways to share assessment data with students and stakeholders.
Written Performance Section — Competency 8: Ability to evaluate a student’s written analysis of a literary text — 100%
The entire written section is one competency and one task, and it is not a generic essay. The candidate evaluates a student’s written analysis of a literary text: whether the student establishes a clear and coherent claim grounded in in-depth analysis; whether logical reasoning, elaboration, and relevant textual evidence support that claim; whether the student demonstrates understanding of the literary elements at work in the given text; and whether the analysis uses logical organisation and purposeful transitions. The candidate’s own writing is the instrument of evaluation — in 1 hour, under the section’s own clock, scored on its own standard. A candidate who prepares only to select answers has prepared for one of this examination’s two passes, not both.
The route, in order
Step 1 — Confirm this is your examination
The Bureau of Educator Certification determines testing requirements when an application for certification is evaluated. Confirm that FTCE English 6–12 — sections 131 and 132, not Middle Grades English 5–9 — is the subject area examination your route requires before you register or pay.
Step 2 — Register and schedule
Register through your FTCE/FELE account on the official program site and schedule by appointment, year round, at computer-based test (CBT) sites throughout Florida and nationwide. Since February 28, 2023, candidates are no longer required to take both sections in a first attempt: the sections may be taken together in one appointment or split into two appointments of one section each, with a separate registration created for each appointment. The sections selected on a registration cannot be changed — splitting after registering for both requires cancelling and creating two registrations. The FLDOE/Pearson fee is $150 for both sections or $75 for a single section, and no reference materials are provided for this test.
Step 3 — Sit both sections
Approximately 60 multiple-choice questions in 1 hour and 30 minutes, and 1 essay in 1 hour, each section separately timed with no transfer of unused time and no return once a section is left behind. The examination may include questions being evaluated for future administrations that do not affect a score. Each section is scored and reported independently: a scaled score of at least 200 passes the Multiple-Choice Section, and at least 5 out of 8 total points passes the Written Performance Section — and the examination is passed only when both are passed.
Step 4 — Receive the result and complete certification
Official score reports are released within 4 weeks of testing. Passing scores are submitted to the Bureau of Educator Certification as part of the certification record; the examination pass is one component of certification, and FLDOE and the Bureau govern the rest.
If a retake is needed
For English 6–12, retake only the section that was not passed — a passed section is not retaken to repair the other one. A candidate must wait 31 calendar days after taking a section before retaking it, must reregister, and pays the section fee again. The 31-day rule is strict: a retake taken inside it risks an invalidated score, so the calendar is part of the retake plan.
What makes this examination demanding
The first difficulty is structural: there are two passes here, not one. The sections are independently administered, scored, and reported, each with its own clock and its own published standard, and strength in one cannot compensate for weakness in the other. A candidate strong on literary analysis who under-prepares the written evaluation — or a strong writer vague on grammar, literacy instruction, and assessment — holds half a pass.
The second difficulty is the written task itself. Competency 8 does not ask for an original literary essay; it asks the candidate to evaluate a student’s analysis — claim, evidence, grasp of literary elements, organisation — and to do that evaluation well in writing, in 1 hour. It is a judgement task disguised as an essay task, and it rewards candidates who have practised reading student writing critically, not only candidates who can produce polished prose of their own.
The third difficulty is breadth inside the multiple-choice paper. Seven competencies run from the history of the English language to assessment-data decisions, weighted unevenly — communication at 18 percent and texts at 17 percent outweigh listening, viewing, speaking, and presenting and assessment at 10 percent each — and no competency is small enough to concede safely on a paper of approximately 60 items, where each item carries visible weight.
The credential at work
Florida’s grades 6–12 English teachers teach the students for whom reading becomes the instrument of every other subject — middle-grade readers still building fluency and vocabulary, and high-school students analysing literature, constructing arguments, researching, and presenting. The framework behind this examination is that classroom’s daily work. This examination is the subject-matter gate for that credential.
What the PassProfessor program will cover
Practice in the examination’s own shape. The program in the works practises in the examination’s shape: multiple-choice work weighted to the seven published competencies — heaviest on communication skills, techniques, and processes and on literary and informational texts — at the real pace of approximately 60 items in 1 hour and 30 minutes, and written practice built as the task Competency 8 actually sets: evaluating a student’s written analysis of a literary text, timed at 1 hour, as its own discipline rather than an afterthought to the selected-response work.
Written from the primary sources. The program is written from the official Test Information Guide for FTCE English 6–12 — eight competencies, their published skills, and the approximate percentages the guide publishes — and teaches the examination’s two-section structure explicitly: sections 131 and 132, independently scored, both required, with the published passing forms stated exactly as FLDOE publishes them and no percentage or raw-score substitute offered in their place.
Both passes, planned separately. Because the sections can now be split across appointments and retaken separately, the program carries the route as published — the split-appointment option, the separate-registration rule, the single-section fee, and the 31-day retake wait — so a candidate can plan two sittings deliberately instead of discovering the structure at registration.
Preparation only. This is preparation for an examination administered by Pearson for the Florida Department of Education. PassProfessor is not affiliated with FLDOE or Pearson, no completion is reported to FLDOE, Pearson, or the Bureau of Educator Certification, and nothing here substitutes for registration or any certification requirement. The Florida Department of Education does not endorse third-party FTCE/FELE test preparation materials.
Tell me when enrollment opens. This program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program. No date is promised. The companion Exam Guide at /ftce-english-6-12-exam-guide/ is available now as the route and blueprint reference.
Frequently asked questions
What are the examination codes for FTCE English 6–12?
131 for the Multiple-Choice Section and 132 for the Written Performance Section, as published in the official program’s test information. The examination is cited by those codes throughout this program.
How many questions are on the examination, and how long is it?
The Multiple-Choice Section has approximately 60 multiple-choice questions in 1 hour and 30 minutes. The Written Performance Section has 1 essay in 1 hour. The sections are separately timed: unused time on one cannot be used on the other.
What scores pass?
Each section has its own published standard, and both must be met: the Multiple-Choice Section requires a scaled score of at least 200, and the Written Performance Section requires at least 5 out of 8 total points. There is no combined score that lets one section carry the other.
Do I have to take both sections on the same day?
No. Since February 28, 2023, the sections may be split into two appointments of one section each, or taken together in one appointment. Each appointment requires its own registration, and the sections on an existing registration cannot be changed.
What does the written section actually ask for?
An evaluation of a student’s written analysis of a literary text — the student’s claim, reasoning, elaboration and textual evidence, understanding of literary elements, and organisation and transitions — written by the candidate under Competency 8, which carries 100 percent of the Written Performance Section.
How is the multiple-choice section weighted?
By the official Test Information Guide: communication skills, techniques, and processes 18%; a wide range of literary and informational texts 17%; effective use of the English language at the postsecondary level 15%; literacy processes and instructional practices 15%; pedagogical content for teaching English language arts 15%; effective techniques for listening, viewing, speaking, and presenting 10%; and various assessments and use of assessment data 10%.
What does the examination cost?
The FLDOE/Pearson fee is $150 for both sections, or $75 for a single section. That is a third-party fee charged for the examination itself, separate from any preparation program.
What if I pass one section and not the other?
You retake only the section that was not passed, after waiting 31 calendar days, reregistering, and paying that section’s fee. The passed section stands; the examination is complete when both sections have been passed.
Is FTCE English 6–12 the same as FTCE Middle Grades English 5–9?
No. They are separate subject area examinations for different grade bands, with separate sections and frameworks. This program covers English 6–12 only.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with FLDOE or Pearson?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider. The program confers no certification and reports nothing to FLDOE, Pearson, or the Bureau of Educator Certification.