The purpose of the English assessment is to assess students’  reading and writing skills.  Results will inform them if they are ready to undertake college-level work or if they need to further develop their skills. Based on their results, students will be placed into a level of English appropriate to their skill level. 

Students must take the English Assessment prior to enrolling in English classes. The exception is the student who has a satisfactory grade in English composition documented by transcripts from an accredited college.

The Assessment Center offers two types of computerized English assessments:

• English as a Native Language (ENL)
• English as a Second Language (ESL)

ENGLISH AS A NATIVE LANGUAGE (ENL):

ENL assessment is taken on a computer and is untimed. Most students take approximately one hour to complete it. 

Students who are native English speakers or attended junior and senior high school in the United States, are strongly recommend to take the ENL Assessment. This test is best suited to assess their skills.

The ENL assessment is in two parts and is multiple choice:

• Reading Comprehension
  • There are 20 questions of two primary types on the Reading Comprehension test.
    • ​The first type consists of a reading passage followed by a question based on the text.
    • The second type of question, sentence relationships, presents two sentences followed by a question about the relationship between these two sentences.
• Sentence Skills
  • There are 20 Sentence Skills questions of two types.
    • The first type is sentence correction questions that require an understanding of sentence structure.
    • The second type is construction shift questions. These questions ask that a sentence be rewritten according to the criteria shown while maintaining essentially the same meaning as the original sentence.

You may place in any of the following English courses:

ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (ESL):

The ESL assessment is taken on a computer and is untimed. Most students take approximately one hour to complete it.

The ESL assessment is designed for students for who want to learn how to speak/read/write in English and/or English learner students coming from other countries who did not complete high school in the U.S.

The ESL assessment is in 3 parts and is multiple choice:

• ACCUPLACER ESL Reading Skills
  • The Reading Skills test evaluates comprehension of short passages. There are 20 questions to this test.
• ACCUPLACER ESL Language Use
  • The Language Use test measures grammar and usage. There are 20 questions to this test.
• ACCUPLACER ESL Sentence Meaning
  • Sentence Meaning assesses the understanding of word meanings in one or two-sentence contexts. There are 20 questions to this test.

You may place in any of the following ESL courses: