ESL Reading Skills 3.

If you hold a piece of copper wire over the flame of a wooden

match, heat will be conducted by the copper wire to your
fingers, and you will be forced to drop the wire. You will,
The ESL Reading Skills test measures your ability however, still be able to hold the match because wood is a
to read English. Specifically, it assesses your poor conductor of heat.
comprehension of short passages. It contains brief Which of the following is implied in the passage above?
passages of 50 words or less and moderate length A. Copper is a good conductor of heat.
passages of 50 to 90 words. Half of this test contains B. Wood and copper conduct heat equally.
straightforward comprehension items (paraphrase, C. Wood is an excellent conductor of heat.
locating information, vocabulary on a phrase level, D. Matches should be made of copper.
and pronoun reference). The other half assesses 4. Many people own different pets. Dogs, cats, birds, and fish
inference skills (main idea, fact versus opinion, are common household pets. Others pets are considered
cause/effect logic, identifying irrelevant information, to be exotic animals. These include snakes, lizards, and
hedgehogs.
author’s point of view and applying the author’s logic
to another situation). According to the passage, snakes are
A. uncommon pets
B. likely to be found in a household with dogs
C. found only in zoos
ESL Reading Skills Sample D. not allowed in people’s homes
Questions 5. Cesar Chavez was an influential leader for farmworkers.
He fought for their rights and better working conditions.
Read the information below, then choose the best Chavez led many strikes that angered farm owners.
Eventually he succeeded in getting increased wages and
answer. better living situations for farmworkers.
1. Television has been introduced to almost every country
in the world, reaching a large number of viewers on every The passage indicates that Chavez changed lives by
continent. About 600 million people saw the first person A. helping to end the farmworkers’ strikes
walk on the moon, and a billion people watched the B. fighting for the rights of farm owners
twentieth Olympic Games. Television has in many ways C. working on the farms every day
promoted understanding and cooperation among people. It D. improving the conditions for farmworkers
does this by showing educational and cultural programs.
6. When cartoonist Charles M. Schulz was a boy in elementary
From this passage, a reader can most reasonably conclude school, other boys teased him for being small and not very
that the author believes that good at sports, and his art teacher told him he had no talent
A. people spend too much time watching television for drawing. He had few friends and was too shy to talk to
a red-haired girl he admired. Later in life, Schulz used his
B. not every country needs to have television
childhood experiences in his comic strip Peanuts: the strip’s
C. television can unify people from around the world
main character, the sad and lonely Charlie Brown, represents
D. television is as important as schools
Shulz as a little boy. Peanuts was unique at the time because
2. People have different ways of learning. Some are better it contained no adult characters. Readers fell in love with
at making mental pictures of new ideas. Others are more Charlie Brown, and Peanuts eventually became one of the
comfortable with writing lists of things to memorize. most popular comic strips of all time.
Certain people can learn best when listening to music, while
others need silence to concentrate. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. Peanuts was the world’s most widely read comic strip.
Which of the following is the main idea of the passage? B. Schulz was a very famous cartoonist.
A. Mental pictures help many to learn. C. Schulz turned the pain of his youth into success as an
B. Some people prefer lists to making mental pictures. adult.
C. To learn well you need to be comfortable. D. The comic strip Peanuts featured children as its only
D. Different individuals have different ways of acquiring characters.
information.

© 2016 The College Board. ACCUPLACER SAMPLE QUESTIONS

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7. Money has been used for thousands of years in nearly every
culture as a means of exchange. However, today, the use of
ESL Sentence Meaning
cash is becoming less and less common in modern societies
all over the world. Every year, a higher percentage of The ESL Sentence Meaning test measures how well
purchases are made online, and even in stores customers are you understand the meaning of sentences in English.
now using credit cards more often than cash. Many people It assesses the understanding of word meanings in
today do all of their banking on the Internet rather than
one- or two-sentence contexts. The sentences are
going to the bank in person.
drawn from the subject areas of natural science,
The author of the passage probably assumes that history/social studies, arts/humanities, psychology/
A. cash will become virtually obsolete in the near future human relations, and practical situations. There are
B. using cash will become popular again
four content areas measured: (a) Particle, Phrasal
C. paying with credit cards all the time is dangerous
D. societies that do business online will struggle Verbs, Prepositions of Direction; (b) Adverbs,
Adjectives, Connectives Sequence; (c) Basic Nouns
8. Before giving first aid to an accident victim, you should
obtain his or her consent. Asking for consent takes a simple and Verbs; and (d) Basic and Important Idioms.
question. Say to the victim, “I know first aid, and I can help
until an ambulance arrives. Is that okay?”
According to the passage, it is wrong to ESL Sentence Meaning
A. use first aid on an accident victim without medical
training
Sample Questions
B. attempt to help an accident victim without permission
C. help a victim before an ambulance arrives Directions for questions 1–8
D. call for an ambulance instead of helping the victim The sentence below has a blank space. Choose the word
9. Dr. Ellen Ochoa is an inventor and is also the first female or phrase that makes the sentence meaningful and
Hispanic astronaut. Her inventions include technology to correct.
help robots inspect equipment in space to maintain safety
and quality control on spacecraft. Before retiring, she
logged more than 1,000 hours in space across several space 1. Shikibu Murasaki, who wrote almost a thousand years ago,
missions. was one of the world’s novelists.
A. most early
According to the passage, Dr. Ochoa is the first B. too early
A. Hispanic person to travel into space C. more early
B. inventor to travel into space D. earliest
C. woman to travel into space
D. Hispanic woman to travel into space 2. The Chang children their parents by making
sandwiches for the whole family.
10. Dogs and cats make very different types of pets. Before A. helped out
deciding whether to buy or adopt a dog or a cat, prospective B. helped with
owners need to carefully consider their own lifestyles C. helps for
and personalities. Dogs may make more affectionate
D. helps to
companions, but they require more care and attention. They
must be taken out several times a day and should not be 3. As demonstrated by his last album, which was released after
left alone for more than a few hours. Larger dogs require his death, Ibrahim Ferrer one of the most beautiful
significant exercise to remain fit and healthy. Cats are voices in Latin music.
usually more independent in nature and interact less with A. had
their owners. Also, a cat can be left on its own all day, or B. have
even for several days, as long as it has food and clean water C. have had
to drink. D. having
From this passage a reader can conclude that
A. owning a cat requires less work than owning a dog
B. people who are away from home during the day should
not own a cat
C. people who like to play with their pets should own a cat
D. owning a cat is more responsibility than owning a dog

© 2016 The College Board. ACCUPLACER SAMPLE QUESTIONS

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Answer Key

COLLEGE-LEVEL MATHEMATICS ESL READING SKILLS

QUESTION QUESTION
NUMBER CORRECT ANSWER NUMBER CORRECT ANSWER
1 C 1 C
2 E 2 D
3 E 3 A
4 C 4 A
5 A 5 D
6 E 6 C
7 C 7 A
8 B 8 B
9 A 9 D
10 D 10 A
11 B
12 E
13 E
14 C
15 "
16 E
17 E
18 E
19 D
20 E

© 2016 The College Board. ACCUPLACER SAMPLE QUESTIONS

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