Northeastern State University

Purpose of the Test

The ability to read well is so important in our culture that it is often the principal cause of success or of failure from the first grade of elementary school through college and into professional life. Skillful reading must be mastered and, consequently, measured carefully and fairly.

The Computerized Placement Tests (CPT) are part of the ACCULPLACER system. The CPTs are presented in a computer-adaptive mode, which benefits students with immediate results for timely decision making, regarding college-level course work.

Scoring

A score of 75 or above releases the student from any remediation in Reading.

The Test

Each student taking this test will be presented with a series of 20 questions of two primary types.

The first type consists of a reading passage followed by a question based on the text. Both short and long narratives are provided. The reading passages can also be classified according to the kind of information processing required, including explicit statements related to the main idea, explicit statements related to a secondary idea, application, and inference.

The second type of question, sentence relationships, presents two sentences followed by a question about the relationship between these two sentences. The question may ask, for example, if the the statement in the second sentence supports that in the first, if it contradicts it, or if it repeats the same information.

Both reading passages and sentence relationship questions are varied according to content categories to help prevent bias because of a student's particular knowledge. These categories include social sciences, natural and physical sciences, human relations and practical affairs, and the arts. In the Reading Comprehension test, for example, each student will receive four long reading passages, eight to nine questions based on short passages, and four to five questions involving sentence relationships.