Reading

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The HSC minimum standard reading test contains 45 questions. The questions are adaptive where they become harder or easier depending on whether a student is answering questions correctly or incorrectly.

Comprehension

Comprehension refers to the ability to process text, understand its meaning and integrate existing knowledge to make meaning.

In the reading test, students apply comprehension strategies to determine the audience and purpose of texts, interpret explicit and implicit information and recognise the purpose of language devices.

Audience and purpose

Activities to support students’ understanding in recognising and identifying the intended audience and purpose of a text.

Locating explicit information

Activities to develop students’ understanding and use of strategies such as skimming and scanning to location explicit information in texts.

Inferring

Activities to develop students’ understanding and use of strategies such as background knowledge, text clues, personal experience, familiar texts and predictions to make inferences when reading and viewing texts.

Common language devices

Activities to support students’ understanding of language devices in recognising and identifying how composers use language devices for a particular effect in texts.

Grammar

Grammar refers to the form, purpose and function of words and their arrangement at sentence and whole-text level in order to make meaning.

In the reading test, students apply their knowledge of grammar to access the meaning of texts and to identify the correct and incorrect use of sentence structure, parts of speech, tense and subject-verb agreement.

Parts of speech

Activities to develop students’ understanding of the parts of speech and recognising the function and purpose of words in sentences and texts.

Cohesive devices

Activities on cohesion to support students’ understanding and knowledge of tracking cohesive devices to make connections and understand texts.

Sentence types

Activities to support students’ understanding and recognition of sentence types by explicitly looking at the use of simple, compound and complex sentences in texts.

Tense

Activities to support students’ understanding and recognition of tense by explicitly looking at the use of past, present and future tense in texts.

Subject-verb agreement

Activities to support students’ understanding and recognition of correct and incorrect use of subject-verb agreement in texts.

Punctuation

Punctuation refers to the marks used in texts that affect the reader’s interpretation and aid understanding.

In the reading test, students apply their knowledge of punctuation to aid them in their understanding of texts and to identify the correct and incorrect use of punctuation marks such as commas, apostrophes and quotation marks.

Punctuation

Activities to support students’ understanding of punctuation to recognise and identify correct and incorrect punctuation use, developing understanding on how punctuation aids meaning in texts.

Spelling

Spelling refers to the encoding of words that enable us to interpret meaning.

In the reading test, students apply their knowledge of spelling to access the meaning of texts and recognise when words have been misspelled.

Spelling

Activities to develop students’ understanding and use of strategies such as etymology, morphology and letter patterns to recognise and identify correct and incorrect spelling in texts.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary refers to the interpretation of familiar and unfamiliar words that are selected to shape meaning in texts.

In the reading test, students demonstrate their understanding of vocabulary by recognising common expressions, understanding that words may have different meanings in different contexts, understanding the impact of specific selections of vocabulary and using strategies to predict the meaning of unfamiliar words.

Antonyms and synonyms

Activities to develop students’ understanding of vocabulary in recognising and identifying antonyms and synonyms in texts.

Inferring word meaning

Activities to develop students’ understanding and use of strategies such as context clues, text conventions, morphology and etymology to infer the meaning of unknown words in texts.