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NSW Opportunity Class Placement Test · 33 questions · 40 minutes · no dictionary
Text 1 · Fiction
Read the text below, then answer the questions.
The Fossil
Theo is a boy of nine, walking with his older sister Jess along the foot of a cliff on the south coast of Tasmania.
Theo had been told that the cliffs near the beach were called the Painted Cliffs, but as he stood at the foot of them, he could not see why. The cliffs looked perfectly grey to him, perhaps a little darker grey near the bottom, where the sea reached up at high tide, but grey all the same.
His older sister, Jess, was the one who liked geology. She had brought a small notebook and a pencil, and she walked slowly along the foot of the cliff, occasionally stooping to pick up a pebble and examine it.
“You’re missing the best part,” she said over her shoulder. “Come closer. You have to look very carefully.”
Theo crossed the sand and joined her. At first he still couldn’t see anything special. But then Jess pointed to a patch of cliff at chest height, and Theo bent down to look at it properly.
The grey was not grey at all. It was a pattern: long, looping bands of rust-red, soft yellow, and a kind of dusty orange, all swirling together as if someone had stirred them with a spoon. Jess explained that the colours had been laid down by water seeping through the rock thousands of years ago, carrying tiny amounts of iron with it.
Theo nodded, but he was no longer really listening. He had spotted something at his feet that he didn’t think Jess had noticed. It was a small, flat stone, about the size of his palm, and on its surface he could see a delicate, curling shape. He picked it up and looked at it more closely. The shape was unmistakable: a tiny, spiralled creature, half-buried in the stone.
“Jess,” he said quietly. “Jess, look at this.”
Jess turned, and when she saw what he was holding her eyes went wide. “Theo,” she said. “Theo, you found a fossil.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Theo could not stop turning the stone over in his hands. The little curled creature was perhaps four hundred million years old. It had once swum in a sea that had since dried up, hardened into rock, and risen up to become the cliffs Theo had been standing under. And he, by chance, on a Saturday afternoon walk with his sister, had been the first person ever to see it.
Up close the cliff shows looping bands of rust-red, yellow and orange in the rock itself. From a distance it just looks grey. The colour is part of the rock, which is why it earns the name. The grey-at-the-bottom detail is true but is not the reason for the name.
The very next sentence says he had spotted something at his feet that Jess had not noticed. His attention has moved to the fossil, not that he is bored or cannot hear.
Stooping means bending the upper body down, which is exactly what Jess does to pick up and examine pebbles. It has nothing to do with stopping, stepping or whispering.
At the end he keeps turning the stone over, thinks about the creature being four hundred million years old, and that he was the first person ever to see it. That is wonder, not pride or tiredness.
The iron is mentioned right after Jess starts explaining the colours: water carried iron through the rock. Its job in the passage is to explain why the cliffs are coloured.
An untrained boy finds something extraordinary on an ordinary walk, simply by looking closely. The option about older sisters knowing more actually goes against the story, since the younger, untrained Theo makes the find.
Text 2 · Cloze
Read the text below. For each gap, choose the word that best fits.
Daniel’s decision
It was Daniel who first (7) ______ the small shape lying in the grass at the side of the path. At first he thought it was a leaf, or perhaps a torn piece of paper. But then it moved, a tiny, frightened movement, no more than a (8) ______ of feathers, and Daniel realised that he was looking at a baby bird.
He knelt down to study it. One of its wings seemed to be (9) ______ at an unusual angle, but otherwise it looked uninjured. Its eyes, like two tiny black beads, watched him without (10) ______, as though it were too tired or too afraid to move.
Daniel had been told, by his teacher and by his mother, that you should never (11) ______ a wild creature, even one that looks helpless. Once you take it home, its parents will not come back for it. He knew this, and yet he could not (12) ______ himself to leave the small creature alone on the path, where any dog or cat might find it.
In the end, he did what he thought was the (13) ______ choice. He took off his jumper, made a shallow nest in the grass beneath a sheltering bush, and very gently moved the bird into it. Then he stood up, dusted off his knees, and walked the rest of the way home, his heart still (14) ______ from the small, important decision he had just made.
The shape is small and easy to miss (he first thinks it is a leaf). “Spotted” fits picking out something small among other things. “Observed” suggests long, deliberate watching.
“A flutter of feathers” is the natural phrase for a small, quick, light movement. “Shake” is too forceful and “ruffle” describes a surface being disturbed.
The bird looks uninjured, but the wing sits at an odd angle because it is being held that way. The other words describe a normal wing position rather than an awkward one.
“Without blinking” is the usual phrase for a steady, fixed gaze. Eyes cannot really watch “without moving”, and “without staring” contradicts the steady look.
The next sentence repeats the word: “Once you take it home”. The warning is about taking a creature out of the wild, not just touching it.
“Could not bring himself to” is the set phrase for being unable to force yourself to do something difficult or upsetting.
Daniel is choosing what he believes is morally correct, so “the right choice” carries the meaning the passage builds. The others fit grammar but not the moral weight.
After a tense moment, a “racing” heart captures the fast, lingering nerves. “Pounding” and “thudding” suggest heavy, slow beats from physical effort.
Text 3 · Poetry
Read the poem below, then answer the questions.
The Wind
The wind has been busy today:
it has shifted the leaves on the path,
shaken the apples from the topmost branch,
and rattled the gate on its hinge.
It has hurried the clouds across the sky,
sent the kite higher than the trees,
and turned the windmill at the farm
faster than a spinning top.
It has whispered secrets to the corn,
whistled tunes through the long grass,
and at sunset, when the day grows cool,
it has settled down to sleep with us.
Giving the wind human actions and qualities is personification. A simile would need the word “like” or “as”, while rhyme and repetition are about sound or structure.
The thing being compared is the windmill’s spinning speed, which is faster than a spinning top. The common slip is to choose the wind, but it is the windmill that is compared.
A whisper is a soft, low sound, so the image is of a gentle wind moving quietly through the corn, not a loud or damaging one.
The poem mixes strong actions (shaking, rattling) with gentle ones (whispering, settling to sleep). The overall effect is a wind that is powerful but also calm and familiar.
The last stanza turns quiet (sunset, the day growing cool, settling to sleep), and the words “with us” place the wind in the same world as the speaker.
Text 4 · Sentence cloze
Six sentences have been removed from the text. For each gap, choose from sentences A to G the one that fits. There is one extra sentence you do not need to use.
How seeds travel
Most plants cannot move from one place to another. (20) ______ To do this, plants have developed many clever ways to spread their seeds far away.
Some seeds are carried by the wind. (21) ______ The seeds are light enough to be blown a long way, sometimes several kilometres, before they fall to the ground and begin to grow.
Other seeds rely on animals to move them. (22) ______ If the burrs do not fall off straight away, they can be carried a long distance before they finally drop.
Some plants use water to move their seeds. (23) ______ Inside the coconut is a tightly sealed seed that can stay alive for many weeks while floating, and may grow into a new tree wherever it eventually washes ashore.
A few plants use a more dramatic method: they fling their seeds out. (24) ______ When the seeds are ripe, the pod twists tightly, and at a touch it suddenly bursts open, scattering the seeds in all directions.
Whichever method a plant uses, the goal is always the same. (25) ______ This stops the seedlings from competing with the parent plant for sunlight, water and space.
F explains why plants need to move their seeds, which answers the opening point that most plants cannot move themselves.
A gives the dandelion, the classic wind-blown seed, matching “some seeds are carried by the wind”.
D introduces burrs with hooks that catch on fur, matching “rely on animals”. The next line about burrs falling off confirms it.
E gives the coconut drifting on ocean currents, matching “use water”. The next line about the coconut confirms it.
G introduces the squirting cucumber pod, matching “fling their seeds out”. The next line about the pod bursting confirms it.
C states the goal (seeds ending up away from the parent), which the next sentence explains: this stops the seedlings competing. Sentence B is the spare one and fits nowhere in the argument.
Text 5 · Multi-text · cycling
Four people write about cycling. Read what each one says, then answer the questions.
Extract A
I was the last of my friends to learn to ride a bike. While they were racing around the park at six or seven, I was still too nervous to lift my feet off the ground, and I finally taught myself at eleven, wobbling up and down our empty street after dark so that nobody would see me fall. These days I ride almost every morning, but never with anyone else. The best part for me is the quiet: the early streets are empty, and for half an hour it feels as though the whole town belongs to me. I have friends who ride in groups and enter races, but I have never wanted to. Cycling is the one part of my day when I am completely alone, and I would not give that up for anything.
Extract B
I sold my car two years ago and have ridden to work ever since. People warned me I would regret it, but I have not, not for a single day. My bike gets me across town faster than the car ever did, because I can slip past the traffic that jams the main road every morning. It is cheaper, too: no petrol, no parking, and the only repair I have paid for in two years was a single new tyre. I am not interested in long weekend rides or expensive equipment. To me a bicycle is simply the quickest and cheapest way to get from my front door to my desk, and that is exactly why I would never go back.
Extract C
For me, cycling has always been about the people. I joined a weekend club three years ago, mostly to make friends after moving to a new town, and it worked better than I had hoped. Every Saturday a dozen of us meet outside the bakery and ride out into the hills together, talking the whole way. Last spring the club rode all the way to the coast and back in a single day, a hundred kilometres in all, and although my legs ached for a week afterwards I have never felt prouder of myself. I could ride on my own, and now and then I do. But to me a bike is really a way of spending a day with good company, and the riding is almost an excuse for the conversation.
Extract D
I love riding, but I will not pretend it always feels safe. Last year a car door swung open right in front of me and I came off onto the road, close enough to the passing traffic that I still think about it now. I was lucky to walk away with nothing worse than a bruised arm. Since then I have grown careful about which streets I use, and I keep off the busiest roads altogether. Our town has painted a handful of bike lanes, but most of them simply stop at the very places where they are needed most. Until that changes, plenty of people who would gladly ride are going to leave their bikes in the shed, and I cannot blame them.
Writer A says they were the last of their friends to learn, and only taught themselves at eleven. The others never mention how old they were when they learned, so it has to be read out of A, not guessed.
Writer B says the bike is faster than the car because it slips past the morning traffic. Writer A enjoys empty early streets but never compares the bike with a car, so A is the tempting wrong choice.
Writer C describes riding a hundred kilometres to the coast and back in a day. Writer B rides every day but only short trips across town, so distance is the key detail.
Writer D describes a car door opening and coming off the bike near traffic. No other writer mentions a crash.
Writer B stresses no petrol, no parking, and only one repair in two years. Writer B also mentions speed, so you have to notice that this question is about cost, but the money reasons still point clearly to B.
Writer D complains that the bike lanes stop where they are needed most and that this keeps people from riding. The other writers do not call for any change.
Writer A treasures the quiet and says it is the one time of day they are completely alone. Writer C also rides alone now and then but prefers company, so C is the close distractor that does not quite fit.
Writer C says cycling is really about the people and that the riding is almost an excuse for the conversation. Writer A has friends who ride but actively avoids group riding, so A is the trap.
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