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Getting Ready for College Algebra


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I am not sure if I should post this here or on the College Board, but here it goes.

 

My Ds will be taking College Algebra his first semester of college in the fall.  He is panicking a bit because the only math he has had this year was physics and a fall semester of statistics.

 

He is definitely a Liberal Arts guy who will be majoring in International Business with a minor in French.  He finished (albeit not very strongly) TT Pre-calc last year.

 

He needs a good summer review of math that will take him confidently into College Algebra in the fall.  Does anyone have any good suggestions?

 

Thank you!

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I'll second ALEKS.  

 

Here's what I like about it.  It targets the practice towards the items the student doesn't know.  It allows some hopping around from topic to topic, but there is also something of a progression in that advanced items aren't unlocked to do until the student has mastered the prerequisite concepts.

 

You can see how many hours each day and how many new topics were mastered.

 

You can assign a new assessment if the student thinks that he's refreshed his memory on a big chunk and can test out of things.

 

You can have it make printable worksheets (answers show up in the parent account).  My ds is taking a stack of these to camp to do in his down time as a staffer.  

 

There is a free two month trial for homeschoolers.  http://www.aleks.com/webform/bn1-154

 

Even if you end up paying for a few months, it is less expensive than a remedial semester at a community college.  (Heck, 6 months is less than what my ds pays for one semester's worth of math text books.)

 

I'm using this with one of my kids who needs to have a higher Compass placement score at the CC.

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Lial's intermediate Algebra. It is super cheap and he can test through chapters and just review those where he isn't solid.

 

He actually used the Lial's Beginning Algebra for 8th and really liked it's format. 

 

We are going to be in an RV most of the summer for my dh's sabbatical.  This format might work better for him than something that requires online access.  On the other hand, the online might keep him accountable.  Ugg.

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Fwiw my son figured out today that he could pretty easily do ALEKS on a Kindle as long as he had Internet. It didn't work for graphing, but othe problems were ok.

 

I have sent a request to ALEKS to ask them some of my questions.  The internet in the RV could be a concern, although I do believe we may have some way of connecting when stationary.  I really think he needs some sort of "incentive" to keep moving along with the work.  This does sound like a good option if it will work for us.

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