Read the passages with your child, then check each answer against the exact words.
Practice test 1 is free. No card needed.
ACER says Reading tests finding information in texts, and linking, interpreting, reflecting on and judging their ideas. These 8 worked questions on our own passages show the kinds it asks, before the exam in June 2027 Expected.
Checked by the SelectiveReady team on 12 October 2026 · Updated 3 November 2026 · How we check facts
Independent. Not affiliated with the Victorian Department of Education or ACER.
It asks your child to read closely and prove each answer from the text. Reading shares the second sitting, after the break, with Verbal Reasoning: 55 minutes for both parts.
We put ACER's description as a few questions a parent can ask at home. Each question below asks one of these.
The questions are multiple choice, with answers shaded in a supplied answer booklet. In our questions every answer can be proved from the passage, so the habit that matters most is checking an option against the exact words.
Read the story through once with your child. Each question shows the answer and the working, so ask which line proves each answer.
We wrote the passages and questions in the style of ACER's published samples, and none appears in our Practice tests.
On the morning the ferry made its final run, Ruby arrived at the landing before her uncle did. The river was the colour of strong tea, and mist sat on it so thickly that the far bank was only a rumour. Behind her, on the rise above the town, the new bridge stood finished and silent, its white railings strung with bunting that no one had yet bothered to straighten.
Uncle Dev came down the track at seven, carrying the brass bell he had polished every Sunday for thirty-one years. He did not mention the bridge. He hung the bell on its hook, checked the cable, and said, as he always did, 'Right. Let's see if she remembers the way.'
Ruby had heard him say it a hundred times and had always laughed. This morning the words seemed to need something from her, so she said, 'She'll remember,' and was surprised by how steady her own voice was.
There were more passengers than usual: Mrs Okafor with her grandson, two men from the council in pressed shirts, and a woman with a camera who kept asking Uncle Dev to stand a little to the left. He stood a little to the left. He answered her questions politely and briefly, the way he answered tourists who asked whether the fish were biting.
Halfway across, the mist began to lift. Ruby watched the far bank sharpen into gums and fence posts and the roof of the old pump shed. She had crossed this water twice a day for every school term she could remember, and she realised she had never once looked at it properly; it had simply been the thing between home and everywhere else.
When the ferry nudged the landing, Uncle Dev rang the bell three times instead of once. Nobody asked why. The council men shook his hand. The woman with the camera lowered it, and for a moment she did not raise it again.
Which of these did Uncle Dev do only on the morning of the final run?
Answer: B
Answer: B
Check each option against the passage and look for words like 'always' or 'every'. The last paragraph says he rang the bell 'three times instead of once', so this was new. He polished the bell every Sunday and said the line 'as he always did'. Option D is the reverse of the text: Ruby arrived first.
Uncle Dev answers the photographer 'politely and briefly, the way he answered tourists'. What does this suggest about him?
Answer: D
Answer: D
Ask what the comparison tells you. Tourists are outsiders, so he treats the photographer as an outsider: polite, but giving little away, in the same way that he says nothing about the bridge. Option A is tempting, but he moves when asked without complaint, and nothing in the passage shows annoyance.
In the first paragraph, the mist is so thick that 'the far bank was only a rumour'. What does this phrase suggest?
Answer: A
Answer: A
Read the phrase alongside the thick mist. A rumour is something you hear about but cannot see for yourself, so the bank was hidden and Ruby had to take its presence on trust. Option B takes 'rumour' at its everyday meaning; nobody in the passage is gossiping.
Which best describes how the passage presents Uncle Dev's feelings about the final run?
Answer: C
Answer: C
Weigh each label against everything he does. He keeps his routine and says little, which makes A and D tempting, but he rings the bell 'three times instead of once', showing the day matters deeply. Nothing shows bitterness: he lets the council men shake his hand and says nothing against the bridge. So his feeling is real but held back.
This passage is harder. Most of its questions ask why the writer made a choice, not only what the text says.
In the 1860s, news from Britain reached the Australian colonies by ship, and it was always old. A report of an election or a change in prices in London might take six weeks or more to arrive, by which time events had moved on. Merchants guessed, governments waited, and families learnt of births and deaths long after they had happened.
The telegraph offered a cure. A message tapped out as electrical pulses could travel along a wire almost instantly, and by 1870 an undersea cable was planned to link Java with the northern coast of Australia. The question was how to carry the signal from there to the cities of the south, across more than 3,000 kilometres of country that few colonists had crossed.
South Australia's Superintendent of Telegraphs, Charles Todd, argued that his colony should build the line, and in 1870 work began from both ends. The planners had underestimated almost everything. Wet-season floods in the north washed away tracks and spoilt supplies; in the dry centre, teams hauled water as well as wire. Wooden poles were attacked by termites, and many were later replaced with iron ones. A signal also weakened over long distances, so repeater stations had to be built along the route, each one staffed by operators who lived for months at a time far from any town.
In August 1872 the last gap in the line was closed, and soon a message could travel from Adelaide to London within a day rather than weeks. The change was hard to overstate. Australian traders could now follow wool and wheat prices in Britain from one day to the next; newspapers printed overseas news while it was still news.
Yet the line's greatest effect may have been one that its builders did not set out to achieve. Before 1872, each colony had kept its face turned towards London more than towards its neighbours. A single wire strung through the heart of the continent, with operators listening at lonely stations all along it, made the continent itself feel, perhaps for the first time, like one place.
What is the passage mainly about?
Answer: C
Answer: C
Find the idea that every paragraph supports. The passage moves from the problem (slow news), to building the line, to its effects. Only option C covers all of that. Options B and D are details from single paragraphs, and Charles Todd is mentioned only once.
Why does the writer begin by describing how news reached the colonies in the 1860s?
Answer: A
Answer: A
Ask how the opening connects to what follows. The second paragraph begins 'The telegraph offered a cure', so the first paragraph sets up the problem of old news. Option C picks up the words 'governments waited', but that sentence is about waiting for news, not about deciding to build the line.
The writer says the line's greatest effect 'may have been one that its builders did not set out to achieve'. What does the writer mean?
Answer: D
Answer: D
Compare the purpose in the second paragraph with the effect in the last. The line was built to carry the Java cable's messages south, linking the colonies with Britain; the unplanned effect was that colonies facing London began to feel part of 'one place'. Option C reverses the plan and the result. Option A is a stated benefit, but the writer never calls it the greatest or unplanned.
In the second paragraph, the writer says 'The telegraph offered a cure.' Why is the word cure well chosen?
Answer: B
Answer: B
A cure is a remedy for something that is wrong. The first paragraph presents old news as a problem, with merchants guessing and governments waiting, so 'cure' frames the telegraph as the fix for that problem. Option A links 'cure' with illness and picks up the mention of deaths, but the passage is about delays in news, not about health.
The wrong options are written to catch the usual slips. After the worked questions, go through this list and ask which one would have caught your child.
Missing the small words: 'Always', 'every' and 'only' decide many answers. Something done every Sunday was not new on the last morning.
A feeling the passage never shows: 'Annoyed' may sound likely, but if no words show that feeling, the option is wrong.
The everyday meaning of a word: In a story about thick mist, 'a rumour' is not gossip. It is something you hear of but can't see.
A detail dressed up as the main idea: An option from a single paragraph can be true and still not be what the whole passage is about.
Matching words, not meaning: An option that repeats the passage's words is tempting. Check it says the same thing.
Turning plan and result around: When a writer compares what was planned with what happened, keep them the right way round.
The check is the same for each: your child puts a finger on the words in the passage that prove the option.
Each question belongs to one skill and links to its page. Each skill page has its own passage and more worked questions, from easier to harder, and some cover kinds of text not on this page, such as poems and posters.
| Skill | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Finding details | What the text says, checked line by line |
| Inference | What the text suggests but doesn't say |
| Main idea | What the whole passage is about |
| Word meaning in context | A word or phrase in its place |
| Tone | How the writer or a character feels |
| Author's purpose | Why the writer made a choice |
| Missing sentences | Where a sentence or paragraph fits |
| Poetry | Images, sound and the turn in a poem |
| Cartoons and visual texts | Posters, cartoons and layout |
| Comparing texts | Where writers agree and where they differ |
No, the passages and questions are ours, written in ACER's published style. On its Prepare page, ACER offers a set of sample questions to download, for the style and format of the exam questions. Which year they come from is not published.
Mostly by reading often, and widely. ACER says the skills the exam measures grow over time, through a culture of learning, varied engaging material and talking freely about ideas. In the exam, if your child is stuck on a question, ACER suggests they make an informed guess and come back to it at the end if there is time.
Our selective entry practice tests run Reading and Verbal Reasoning together under the real time. Afterwards you'll see results by skill, so you know whether inference or word meaning costs more marks. For the part itself, see VIC selective entry reading.
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.
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