Guided Self-Placement Questionnaire

1. Are you comfortable reading textbooks?

2. Do you understand and learn from what you read in textbooks?

3. Are you comfortable reading novels?

4. Are you comfortable writing essays?

5. Most of your college instructors expect you to make clear arguments both in written and verbal forms and to prove these claims with appropriate evidence. Your English instructors will help you develop these skills, but incoming students are expected to know how to recognize an argument.

Read the three sentences and decide which seems to be the clearest thesis statement. Then answer the question below.

1. The population of the United states grew faster in the 1990s than in any previous decade.
2. The population of the United States grew faster in the 1990s than in any previous decade because Congress increased the level of legal immigration and the government stopped enforcing most laws against illegal immigration in the interior of the country.
3. Allowing a high rate of immigration helps the United States deal with the problems of an increasingly aging society and helps provide funding for millions of Social Security recipients.

How confident are you to recognize that example 3 is the best thesis statement for a college-level argumentative paper while the others shown are weak examples?

6. How many multi-page research papers with proper citations did your high school classes require you to write?

7. This essay represents a standard ENGL 111 College Writing assignment. Read it carefully and choose the response that most accurately demonstrates how you would react to this assignment.

Formal Causal Argument: Identify a significant change in human behavior over a period of months or years. For example, you might think about the increased popularity of reality television, the drop in homicide levels, or the increasing level of childhood obesity. Determine the time span of the trend and analyze the possible causes of the trend, arguing for the ones you think are most likely the true causes. Remember that providing facts is not the same thing as establishing causes, even though facts can help support your causal analysis. Begin by doing some research, then create a formal outline with a working thesis, a rough draft, and a final draft of at least four pages with at least three scholarly sources.

8. The following passage comes from an ENGL 111 College Writing textbook. Read it carefully and answer the question below.

There are environmental impacts to consider when large parts of land are paved to create a parking lot. The impervious surface of a parking lot accumulates pollutants, according to Bernie Engel, a professor of agricultural engineering at Purdue. Along with dust and dirt, heavy metals in the air like mercury, copper and lead settle into the lot’s surface in a process called dry deposition. These particles come from all kinds of diffuse sources, such as industry smokestacks, automobiles and even home gas water heaters.

“If they were naturally settling on a tree or grass, they would wash off those and into the soil, and the soil would hold them in place, so they wouldn’t get into the local stream, lake or river,” Engel says.

This passage is typical of college reading expectations. Based on your reading of this passage, which of the following statements best describes you?

1. Read the following passage and answer the question below:

William Still was just a boy when he first learned about the Underground Railroad. He never knew the name of the man his family helped to escape. He knew only that the man was running from slave catchers.

From the early 1800s to the mid-1860s, the Underground Railroad helped thousands of people escape slavery. William, a black man born free, became a key person in this movement. He helped more than 800 people gain freedom. And he recorded their stories in a secret diary so future generations would know the struggles they endured.

William was born in New Jersey in 1821. His father, Levin, and his mother, Charity, were both ex-slaves from Maryland. He was the youngest of 18 children. He never knew some of his older siblings who were born while his parents were in slavery, however. They had already been sold away long ago. He explains in the first few pages of his notes:

“Like millions of my race, my mother and father were born slaves, but were not contented to live and die so. My father purchased himself in early manhood by hard toil. Mother saw no way for herself and children to escape the horrors of bondage but by flight.”

Charity would escape the chains of slavery, but not without heartache. When her opportunity to run came, she could take only two of her four young children. The other two would remain behind in slavery. At the time she had two sons and two daughters. She chose to take her daughters with her. She believed her boys — Levin, age 8, and Peter, age 6 — had the better chance to survive as slaves. But she also knew that she may never see them again. It was a decision that would haunt her for years to come.

Life in New Jersey was peaceful, yet the shadow of slavery was never fully gone. Both Levin and Charity had taken Still as their new last name. And Charity’s real first name was Sidney. She changed it after she escaped to throw off any slave catchers. No one outside the family knew her history or her real name. But William knew. He also knew how she cried every night over her two lost boys. William learned at a very young age to love freedom and hate slavery. He decided that he would do whatever he could to help slaves to safety.

After reading the passage above which statement best applies to you?

2. Read the following passage and answer the question below:

Have you ever walked along a beach or driven through a desert and wondered how so much sand could end up in one place? It is truly remarkable when you consider the number of tiny grains of sand that make up a beach or desert. Even more remarkable are the forces of nature that created that sand and consolidated it into such an awe-inspiring landscape.

Most beaches and deserts where sand blankets the landscape were created over thousands and sometimes millions of years. Sand was once a part of a larger solid substance — such as a rock, seashell, or coral — that broke away and weathered into a small granular material. This weathering was caused by a natural process called erosion, which continues to slowly shape the landscape around us.

Wind and water are the two primary forces of nature at work to produce erosion. First, let’s examine the power of winds. As winds gust over exposed rocky outcrops and mountains, they slowly reshape these formations by breaking away small pieces of minerals. Winds then carry these granular-sized pieces of minerals and deposit them in other locations.

Wind erosion occurs everywhere, but the process is much more prevalent and fast-acting in arid areas. In deserts especially, where bodies of water are scarce and annual rainfall is minimal, wind erosion creates sand much more quickly. And, with very little water sources to wash the sand away and redeposit it, these tiny particles consolidate to form deserts and massive hills known as dunes.

The other major force of erosion that creates sand is water, mainly in the form of rivers, streams, and rainfall. Water flows in the path of least resistance. If nothing is in the path of a stream, gravity carries the flow of water in a straight downward direction. Rocky formations force the flow of water to bend around them, but over time the flowing water continuously collides into these rocky barriers, breaks small granular-sized fragments off the rocks, and deposits these grains of sand elsewhere. As a result, over large spans of time the water flow creates a path of least resistance by eroding away obstacles in its path.

After reading the passage above which statement best applies to you?

1. If you were struggling in a math course, would you take advantage of the help offered by our math instructors or from our math tutors?

3. Which situation best describes your experience with math classes?

4. Please choose the grade that best reflects what you have received in math courses.

5. Which of the following best describes your ability in math courses?

6. How often do you use math in your current/past job(s)?

7. Are you confident in your ability to solve this math problem?
\( 2(3x-7) = 10x + 4 \)

8. Are you confident in your ability to solve this math problem?
Find the slope and y-intercept of
\( y = \frac{3x}{2} – 2\)

9. Are you confident in your ability to solve this math problem?
Determine the x-intercepts of the quadratic function
\(f(x) = 3x^2 + 19x -14\)

10. Are you confident in your ability to solve this math problem?
Determine the domain of the function
\(f(x) = \sqrt{2-x}\)

11. Are you confident in your ability to solve this math problem?
Give the values of the six trigonometric functions for
\( \theta = -\frac{\pi}{3}\)

12. Are you confident in your ability to solve this math problem?
Find the center and radius of the circle:
\( x^2+y^2+4x-14y+48=0 \)