This assessment, used for course placement and sequencing within our programs, is meant to give us a picture of a student’s current academic English proficiency. It is not used as a substitute for the TOEFL or IELTS for admissions purposes.

This assessment is timed, paper-based, and takes approximately two hours.

Tests are scheduled regularly throughout the year on the Portland campus, and can be . 

This assessment comprises five sections: 

  1. Listening Comprehension: Testers will listen to a conversation or question and choose the correct response.
  2. Grammar and Editing: Testers select the grammatically correct options to complete a variety of sentences.
  3. Academic Vocabulary: Testers use collocation and definition knowledge to select appropriate vocabulary to complete a sentence.
  4. Reading Comprehension: Testers read short passages of typical university level text and respond to comprehension questions about these.
  5. Writing: Testers are asked to write in response to an academically relevant prompt for a total of 30 minutes. This is then analyzed for elements of organization, clarity, mechanics, vocabulary level sophistication, grammatical accuracy, and development. 

Students wishing to build skills before an assessment are welcome to do all of any of the following, if desired:

  1. For listening comprehension skills development:
    • Students have found it helpful to regularly listen to podcasts of interest (such as , , , etc.). 
    • There are also numerous, that may also be useful and are easily searchable on the internet. 
  2. To prepare and review for the grammar section, and to generally strengthen these important skills:
    • Some specific topics that are recommended to start with (there are a lot of great practice activities available through quick online searches) are:
      • Subject-verb agreement review (EG like)
      • Verb tense review (past, present, progressive, and perfect) (EG like )
      • Sentence structure (avoiding fragments and run ons) (EG like )
      • Modal verbs review (EG like )
  3. For academic vocabulary review, it is recommended that students adopt a regular routine of practice and review involving the academic word list. 
    • . 
    • There are numerous practice sites available online, , and .  
  4. To build reading skills, which are a key to success in college, making a habit of reading every day (newspaper, books, academic journals) is not only helpful preparation for a placement assessment, but can also help prepare for future courses. 
    • We highly recommend using while reading. 
    • There are also many advanced reading comprehension sites available for students to practice with responding to questions about a text. Some are academic and others are for .
  5. Finally, for the writing component, a student might opt to practice with some timed writing prompts beforehand, to get a feel for the time limit and be better able to manage within these parameters. 
    • offers many prompt suggestions, so would have plenty of options to choose from for practice.

** Here is another list of English Skills Practice Websites that you might find helpful.