Prepare for the Writing Placement Assessment

Your writing course placement with Accuplacer is based on your performance on the Reading Comprehension test. The test consists of 20 multiple choice questions designed to measure your ability to understand what you read, to identify main ideas and to make inferences.

Reading Comprehension Sample Questions

Directions: Read the passage(s) below and answer the question based on what is stated or implied in the passage(s) and in any introductory material that may be provided.

Example 1:

Technology has scrambled the lines between public and private. Cellphones make our most

Q: Which of the following would be most similar to the examples the author provides in the passage?

1. A person’s confidential information is compromised because that person left some papers in a public place.
2. A person enjoys numerous television programs, so that person buys a sophisticated new television on which to watch them.
3. A person’s unfiltered first reaction to a major event becomes widely known because that person posts it online.
4. A person wants to keep a record of his or her private thoughts, so that person secretly starts keeping a daily journal.

Answer: C

 

Example 2:

The neighborhood of Harlem in the twenties offered up a cultural richness that made everything seem possible. Jervis Anderson, writing in the New Yorker in 1981, noted, “Harlem has never been more high-spirited and engaging than it was during the nineteen-twenties. Blacks from all over America and the Caribbean were pouring in, reviving the migration that had abated toward the end of the war—word having reached them about the ‘city,’ in the heart of Manhattan, that blacks were making their own.”  Adapted from Hilton Als, “Te Sojourner.” ©2015 by Condé Nast

Q: Based on the passage, Anderson puts “city” in quotation marks most likely to:

1. introduce irony into his writing
2. signal a nonliteral usage
3. mark a citation of another author
4. indicate the inclusion of dialogue

 Answer: B