Ask your child to say the writer's point in a sentence before reading the options.
Practice test 1 is free. No card needed.
Main idea questions ask for the point a whole passage or paragraph makes, built from all of it. Children in Year 7 now meet them in Year 8, in the exam expected in June 2027.
Checked by the SelectiveReady team on 12 October 2026 · Updated 27 October 2026 · How we check facts
Independent. Not affiliated with the Victorian Department of Education or ACER.
ACER says Reading tests finding information in texts, and linking, interpreting, reflecting on and judging their ideas. A main idea question asks your child to link those ideas into a single point, for the whole passage or for one paragraph.
The questions below are ours and share one passage, The Minute of Looking, a writer's memory of fixing a chair with a grandfather. Each one shows the answer and the working, so read them together. For each option, ask whether it covers the whole passage or only part of it.
My grandfather kept a tin of buttons on the shelf above his workbench, beside jars of screws sorted by size and a roll of copper wire he had owned for longer than I had been alive. When something in our house broke, it went to him before it went to the bin, and usually it never went to the bin at all.
As a child I assumed he mended things because he could not afford new ones. That was partly true when he was young, but by the time I knew him it was no longer the reason. He could have replaced the kettle, the radio and the wobbly kitchen chair many times over. He chose not to.
I understood why only when he taught me to fix the chair. We turned it upside down, and he made me look at it for a full minute before touching it. Which joint moved? Where had the glue failed? Why had it failed there and not somewhere else? By the time we reached for the clamp, I knew that chair better than I knew most of the furniture I had sat on every day of my life.
That, I think, is what mending gives us that buying does not. To repair something, you have to understand how it was made, and to understand how it was made, you have to pay attention. A new chair asks nothing of you. A broken one asks you to notice.
I do not mean that we should never replace anything; some things are worn beyond saving, and pretending otherwise wastes everybody's time. But I have come to distrust the habit of reaching for something new before looking closely at what is already in front of me. The chair is still in my kitchen. It does not wobble, and every time I sit on it, I remember the minute of looking.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Answer: C
Answer: C
Look for the idea the writer builds towards; it is stated in the fourth paragraph: to repair something 'you have to pay attention'. Option D sounds close, but the last paragraph says 'I do not mean that we should never replace anything'. Option A is the belief the writer had as a child and then corrects.
What is the main idea of the second paragraph?
Answer: A
Answer: A
Ask what the whole paragraph is doing. It states the writer's childhood guess, then says it 'was no longer the reason' and that he 'chose not to' replace things. Option C is the guess the paragraph rejects, and B lists details rather than the main point.
Which best describes how the writer develops the main idea across the passage?
Answer: D
Answer: D
Track what each paragraph does. The second sets aside the writer's childhood guess that the grandfather was poor; the third and fourth use the chair repair to show that mending teaches attention. Option A reverses this, since the belief is proved wrong. Option B fails because the writer says some things should be replaced and describes only one repair.
Read it all, then say it in a sentence. Naming the point before seeing the options stops a well-written detail from pulling your child away.
These steps are ours, drawn from the working in the answers above.
In this passage the main idea builds up across the paragraphs. It isn't stated in the first line.
Before looking at the options, ask your child to say what the writer is getting at, in their own words.
For a paragraph question, ask what the whole paragraph is doing, not which facts it lists.
Remove options that are only a detail, too strong, or the opposite of what the writer says.
Here the writer adds a limit at the end, saying some things are worn beyond saving.
Every trap below is a wrong option from the questions above. Read the list together and ask which one looked right to your child at first; the fix is to test the option against the whole passage.
After a news story or a chapter, ask your child for the main idea in a short sentence. Then ask which part of the text gave it away.
Cover the headline of an article and ask your child to write one. Compare it with the real headline.
For a longer text, give each paragraph a short label, then read the labels together. They show how the idea builds.
ACER doesn't publish how many questions each part has, so there is no set time per passage. Reading and Verbal Reasoning share 55 minutes between them.
That makes the first full read worth protecting: main idea questions rest on it, and so do the other questions on the passage. A practice sitting shows whether your child can afford it under the clock. Start with Practice test 1: one full practice test with results, with a free account.
Afterwards you'll see results by skill, so you know whether the point or the details cost the marks. For more passages with worked answers, see VIC selective entry reading questions, or the guide to VIC author's purpose questions.
Practice test 1 marks every answer and shows results by skill: what your child already does well and the three skills to work on next.
Practise for the real test
Practice test 1 is free. Then packs from A$109 for 12 months, or A$9 a week, per exam.