CLA Practice Materials

You are about to look at some sample test questions as you prepare to take the actual CLA test.

The Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) is an open-ended assessment that measures your critical thinking, analytic reasoning, problem solving, and written communication skills.

The CLA consists of two main tasks:

• Performance Task

This task presents a real-world situation in which an issue, problem, or conflict is identified. You are asked to assume a relevant role to address the issue, suggest a solution or recommend a course of action based on the information provided in a document library.

Typically a full CLA performance task contains six to twelve documents in the library, and students have 90 minutes to complete the task. The document library contains a variety of reference sources that can vary from a technical report, a data table, a newspaper article, an office memorandum, an e-mail, and other every-day materials.

For practice questions please click on the link below:

CLA Performance Task

• Analytic Writing Task

The Analytic Writing Task includes a pair of prompts called Make-an-Argument and Critique-an-Argument.

A Make-an-Argument prompt typically presents an opinion on some issue and asks students to write, in 45 minutes, a persuasive analytic essay to support a position on the issue.

A Critique-an-Argument prompt asks students, in 30 minutes, to critique an argument by discussing how well-reasoned they find it to be (rather than simply agreeing or disagreeing with the position presented).