Para Professional
Para Professional is a trademark of its owner, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse Test Treasure Publication or TTP Prep.
Para Professional is a trademark of its owner, which is not affiliated with and does not endorse Test Treasure Publication or TTP Prep.
10 sample questions for the Para Professional, with the correct answer and an explanation for each. No account needed. Try each one before you open the answer.
Sections covered on the exam: Reading, Readingskills:Passage-Basedquestions, Opinion, Readingskills:Tables,Charts,Andgraphs, Readingskills:Mainideaandtextorganization, Readingapplication:Foundationalskills, Readingapplication:Comprehensionsupport, Mathematics, Numbersenseandoperations, Geometryandmeasurement, Writing, Writingskills:Grammarandusage, Writingskills:Punctuationandspelling, Writingskills:Partsofspeechandsentenceparts, Writingapplication:Thewritingprocess, Writingapplication:Purpose,Audience,Andmode.
Question 1 · Reading
Passage · Questions 1–4 For centuries, lighthouses struggled with a basic problem: most of the light they produced was wasted. Keepers burned oil lamps and placed polished metal reflectors behind the flames, but much of the glow scattered upward into the sky or down into the tower. On a foggy night, a ship's captain several miles offshore might see nothing at all. The solution came from a French physicist named Augustin Fresnel. Instead of using one thick, heavy lens, Fresnel arranged many thin rings of glass prisms around a single lamp. Each ring bent the light at a slightly different angle so that nearly all of it left the lens in one concentrated horizontal beam. His design was lighter than a solid lens of the same size, cheaper to produce, and dramatically brighter. A lamp that once could be seen from a few miles away could now be spotted from more than twenty miles out. Within a few decades, Fresnel lenses had been installed along coastlines around the world. Although many lighthouses now use automated electric lights, the principle behind Fresnel's rings still appears in car headlights, overhead projectors, and even some solar collectors. The primary purpose of the passage is to
Answer: B. explain how an invention solved a problem with lighthouse lighting and describe its lasting influence
The passage opens with a problem (wasted lighthouse light), explains how Fresnel's ring design solved it, and closes by noting where the idea is still used, so explaining the invention and its lasting influence captures the whole passage. The author never argues for returning to old lenses, mentions only one scientist, and refers to keepers only briefly in the first paragraph.
Question 2 · Readingskills:Mainideaandtextorganization
Paragraph Although many people picture deserts as lifeless, these regions support a surprising variety of organisms. Cacti store water in thick, waxy stems. Some beetles collect droplets from morning fog on their bumpy backs. Many small mammals avoid the heat by sleeping in underground burrows during the day and searching for food at night. Which statement best expresses the main idea of the paragraph?
Answer: A. Deserts are home to many living things that have adapted to harsh conditions.
The first sentence states that deserts support a variety of organisms, and each following sentence gives an example of a living thing adapted to desert conditions. The statements about cacti and mammals are supporting details, and the paragraph never claims deserts are the harshest places on Earth.
Question 3 · Numbersenseandoperations
Ms. Reyes needs 24 copies of a 15-page packet. Her printer prints 45 pages every 3 minutes. At this rate, how long will it take to print all of the packets?
Answer: B. 24 minutes
The job is 24 × 15 = 360 pages, and the printer prints 45 ÷ 3 = 15 pages per minute, so the time is 360 ÷ 15 = 24 minutes. Dividing 360 by 45 gives 8, which is the number of 3-minute intervals rather than minutes, and 72 results from multiplying the correct time of 24 minutes by 3 a second time.
Question 4 · Mathematics
To solve 72 ÷ 12, a student uses repeated subtraction and writes: 72, 60, 48, 36, 24, 12, 0. She then says the answer is 7 because she wrote 7 numbers. What should the paraprofessional help her understand?
Answer: A. The quotient is the number of subtractions, 6, not the count of numbers she wrote.
Division as repeated subtraction counts how many groups of 12 are removed; there are six subtractions (72 to 60, 60 to 48, and so on down to 0), so 72 ÷ 12 = 6. Her list includes the starting value 72, which is not a subtraction. Subtracting 8 would model a different problem, and reversing the dividend and divisor would also be incorrect.
Question 5 · Writingskills:Punctuationandspelling
Which sentence is punctuated correctly?
Answer: C. The field trip, which was scheduled for Tuesday, has been moved to Thursday.
A nonessential clause beginning with "which" must be set off with a comma on both sides. The other sentences use only one comma, which either leaves the clause open or separates the subject from its verb or a preposition from its object.
Question 6 · Reading
Passage · Questions 101–104 Mary Anning grew up in a small town on England's southern coast, where the cliffs crumbled a little more with every winter storm. Her family was poor, and as a girl she helped her father gather the curious stone shapes that tumbled onto the beach, such as coiled shells and pointed "thunderbolts" that visitors bought as souvenirs. When her father died, those small sales became the family's main income. When Mary was about twelve, she and her brother uncovered the skull of a creature no one in town could name. Over the following months, Mary patiently chipped the rest of the skeleton out of the rock. It turned out to be an ichthyosaur, a sea reptile that had lived millions of years earlier. Later she found the first nearly complete skeleton of a plesiosaur, an animal so strange that some experts at first accused her of faking it. Because she was a woman without formal schooling, Mary was not allowed to join the scientific societies of her day, and wealthy collectors often published her discoveries under their own names. Still, many respected scientists quietly traveled to her small shop to ask her opinion. Today she is recognized as one of the founders of the study of prehistoric life. The primary purpose of the passage is to
Answer: A. describe how a collector with no formal training made major discoveries despite being excluded
The passage traces Mary Anning's path from collecting beach fossils to finding major skeletons, notes that she was barred from scientific societies, and ends with her recognition as a founder of the field. The passage names the reptiles but never describes how they hunted, it makes no argument about what societies should do now, and the souvenir trade is only background in the first paragraph.
Question 7 · Readingskills:Mainideaandtextorganization
Paragraph For many years, scientists assumed that the brain simply rested during sleep. Research now shows otherwise. During deep sleep, the brain replays the day's experiences, strengthening important connections between nerve cells while allowing unimportant ones to weaken. Students who sleep after learning a list of words recall more of them the next day than students who stay awake for the same number of hours, and even a short afternoon nap can improve memory of a newly learned skill. Which statement best expresses the main idea of the paragraph?
Answer: B. Sleep plays an active role in helping the brain strengthen memories.
The paragraph rejects the old idea that the brain rests during sleep and then gives evidence that sleep strengthens memory, so the main idea is sleep's active role in memory. The statement about years of study is too general, the paragraph never ranks naps above a full night's sleep, and it says students who stay awake remember less, not more.
Question 8 · Numbersenseandoperations
A school orders 312 snack packs that cost $4.89 each. Which is the most reasonable estimate of the total cost?
Answer: D. $1,500
Rounding $4.89 to $5 and 312 to 300 gives 5 × 300 = $1,500, which is close to the exact cost of $1,525.68. The estimates of $1,200 and $1,250 come from dropping the cents and treating $4.89 as $4, and $150 is off by a factor of 10.
Question 9 · Mathematics
A student asks why 2/3 and 8/12 are equal "when the numbers in 8/12 are so much bigger." Which explanation from the paraprofessional is most accurate?
Answer: A. "Multiplying top and bottom by 4 means multiplying by 4/4, which is 1, so the value is unchanged; the pieces are just smaller."
Multiplying by 4/4 is multiplying by 1, which does not change the value, and a fraction strip model shows that 8 twelfths cover the same length as 2 thirds. Adding the same number to the top and bottom changes the value (2/3 becomes 8/9), larger numbers do not mean a larger fraction, and many fractions are greater than 1.
Question 10 · Writingskills:Punctuationandspelling
Which sentence punctuates the dialogue correctly?
Answer: B. "Are you ready for the test?" asked Ms. Kim.
The quoted words form a question, so the question mark belongs inside the closing quotation mark, and no comma is added after it. Placing the question mark outside the quotation, moving it to the end of the whole sentence, or adding a comma after it are all incorrect.
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