P.E.R.T. PREPARATIONReading and WritingHelping Students to Understand the

Post Secondary Education Readiness Test

About the P.E.R.T.

• At the end of the P.E.R.T., each student receives a score.

• The Reading section has 30 questions, and the Writing section has 30 questions.

• Test results are valid for two years.• The test is untimed.• The test is taken on a computer and is adaptive.

The P.E.R.T. is Adaptive

An adaptive test is a form of computer-based test that adapts to the examinee's ability level.

For example, if an examinee performs well on an item of intermediate difficulty, he will then be presented with a more difficult question.

Or, if he performed poorly, he would be presented with a simpler question.

Test Score Breakdown

P.E.R.T. Scores

Main Idea - Overall point of the passage

Purpose - To inform, to persuade, to entertain

Tone - Sarcastic, encouraging, admiring, warm, lighthearted,

Organizational Structure - Chronological, cause and effect,

problem/solution, sequential, compare/contrast, advantages

and disadvantages, topical

Fact & Opinion – distinguishing between

Supporting Details- Assertions, counter-arguments, and

refutations

Relationships and transitions between sentences, time, contrast,

addition

Reading Comprehension Competencies

Sample Reading Passage Read the passage--

1.Exact figures on the number of people living in poverty in the United States

are difficult to determine. 2. For one thing, the amount of money needed for

subsistence varies by locality. 3. For example, the money needed for rent in

New York City is much greater than the money needed in rural Arkansas. 4.

Another difficulty is that those most likely to be missed by the U.S. census are

the poor. 5. People most likely to be missed in the census live in ghettos

(where several families may be crowded into one apartment) or in rural areas,

where some homes are inaccessible and where some workers follow the

harvest from place to place and therefore have no permanent home. 6.

Transients of any kind are sometimes missed by the census. 7. The conclusion

is inescapable that the proportion of the poor in the United States is

underestimated because the poor tend to be invisible, even to the government.

Sample Reading Questions

The word subsistence in sentence 2 means?A. Food

B. Basic shelter and food meals

C. Moving

D. Work needs

The main pattern of organization of the passage is A. A series of events

B. A comparison and contrast

C. Steps in a process

D. A list of reasons

Sample Reading QuestionsOne can conclude from this passage that

A. There are probably fewer poor people in the United States than the number reported in the U.S. census.

B. There are fewer poor people in New York City than in Arkansas.

C. More poor people live in the United States than the census indicates.

D. Poor people deliberately avoid being counted by census workers.

Sample Reading Questions

You might infer that the author feels people should be classified as poor

A. According to their income only.

B. According to income and cost of living.

C. Only according to the state they live in.

D. According to whether they are transient or not.

Sample Questions

Which sentence best expresses the main idea of the passage?

A. The amount of money needed for food and shelter varies greatly from place to place in the United States.

B. The census is likely to underestimate the number of transients in the country.

C. Because it is difficult to determine the exact number of poor people in the United States, the proportion of the poor is underestimated.

D. There are various reasons for poverty throughout our country.

P.E.R.T. Writing Competencies

Thesis--sentence stating the point of the paper

Argument writing

Adequate and credible support

Crediting sources

Style and tone (academic, informative, persuasive)

Transitioning between ideas

Grammar--tense shifts, subject-verb agreement, pronoun agreement, spelling,

Punctuation and Mechanics - capitalization

Commonly confused words

Sentence structure – Coordination, subordination-- dependent and

independent clauses, parallelism

Sample Writing QuestionsWhich of the following selections is written correctly?

A. The weary explorers trudged across miles of frozen tundra. Each man desperately wishing he had never left his warm fireside.

B. Whenever we go to the annual club picnic, we liked to play beach volleyball and to eat barbeque.

C. If you have already completed the lab work, you should have recorded your results in your chemistry notebook.

Sample Writing QuestionsWhich of the following is written correctly?

A. The weary explorers trudged across miles of frozen tundra. Each man desperately wishing he had never left his warm fireside.

B. Whenever we go to the annual club picnic, we liked to play beach volleyball and to eat barbeque.

C. If you have already completed the lab work, you should have recorded your results in your chemistry notebook.

A. One of the most interesting legends is about leprechauns which are tiny fairies with the face of an old man who play tricks on people.

B. The whole team, along with the coaches, are leaving at 3 o’clock because it usually takes at least four hours to drive to Appleton.

C. None of my relatives likes my mom’s fried okra, but everybody, just to be polite, eats it, and all of them keep telling her it’s delicious.

Sample Writing Questions

Which of the following sentences is written correctly?

A. Everybody in the astronomy class is making their own “backyard telescope” from a kit.

B. I just got a brand new camera! Doesn’t anybody want his/her picture taken?

C. After the thunder storm, we walked out in the yard and stood there in the peaceful evening. It was so quiet, you could almost hear the grass growing.

Sample Writing Questions

Sample Writing Questions

A. Everybody in the astronomy class is making their own “backyard telescope” from a kit.

B. I just got a brand new camera! Doesn’t anybody want his/her picture taken?

C. After the thunder storm, we walked out in the yard and stood there in the peaceful evening. It was so quiet, you could almost hear the grass growing.

Which of the following is written correctly?

Which of the following sentences is written correctly?

A. When the danger had passed Carol realized their boat had almost been swamped by the fierce waves.

B. The towering waves crashed over the tiny sailboat, but it kept bobbing upright after each wave passed.

C. Before we reached the shore the thunderstorm struck and we had to paddle for our lives to get off the lake and into dry shelter.

Sample Writing Questions

Helpful Websites

Reading: Townsendpress.net (Click on “Try out Exercises”)

Grammar: Chompchomp.com (Interactive exercises, presentations, YouTube videos)

Essay Writing: Owl.english.purdue.edu/owl (Thesis, structure, formatting)

Additional Practice Tests: https://college.measuredsuccess.com/mscollege/practiceTest2/index.html