Top Selective School Graduate’s Tips on the English section of the OC exam

The OC Test reading component involves 25 multiple choice questions which must be answered within 30 minutes. Students are required to read a variety of texts such as poems, informative texts, persuasive expositions and narrative excerpts and respond to the associated questions using inferential and summarising skills. This combination of higher-order thinking and tight time conditions means that the OC reading test is unlike any reading comprehension test you likely have ever done before; however, with some guidance and the help of JP English’s OC Test Program, you too can excel!

Practise with practice papers

Like any other test, it is of utmost importance that you practise doing the questions to get used to the types of questions you may see in the real test. However, it is even more important that you do these papers under test conditions, meaning you practise in a quiet room, on a table, with a timer and no dictionary. You could even try doing the reading component as part of a larger OC trial test to ensure that you can maintain focus for the entirety of the exam.

Whilst it is key to expose yourself to as many questions as possible, I recommend that you dedicate an equal amount of time to thoroughly marking and reviewing your mistakes. Make sure to dedicate more time to areas where you see recurrent errors!

These principles are reflected in our OC test program here at JP English, where test conditions are replicated for trial tests and where tutors dedicate significant time to go through each students’ mistakes.

Test strategy

Sometimes no matter how much practice you do, you may see no improvement in your results. In such circumstances, a change in your test strategy is needed – make sure to treat each time you practise like an experiment until you find out which unique combination of techniques works best for you. Test strategies I recommend include:

• Identifying keywords: As you read through the text, circle or underline keywords such as dates, places and important names. This will allow you to quickly identify key parts of the text when referenced in the questions.
• Summarising the text in your mind: Whilst some questions will require you to focus on the details, others will require you to show a broader understanding of the events and message of the entire text, and so make sure to summarise each text in your mind.
• Inferring the meaning of vocabulary: Some questions will reference vocabulary from the texts that you will not necessarily know the meaning of. In such cases, go back to the text and try to guess the meaning from the words around it. If that does not help, try to deduce the meaning by splitting up the word into parts that you may know. For example, your word was benevolent, you may have heard the same bene- in benefit, and thus you can deduce that benevolent has somewhat of a positive tone to it.
• Switching the order of how you do your questions: You do not have to do Q1~25 in this order! To maximise your time toward question types you are weaker in, you can choose to do questions you find easier first.
• Reading through all the options: Whilst you may consider some of these strategies not of benefit to you, reading through all the options before picking the best answer is an essential technique that everyone must use.

Timing

In the OC reading test, time is of the essence and so make sure to keep your eye on the clock throughout the exam. But in a case where you are running out of time, first colour in a bubble for each remaining question, scan your questions and then scan your text for keywords so you can go back and quickly colour in your new answer.

Interested in learning more? Enrol in our Year 3-4 OC English Program where you can learn the exact methodology of excelling in reading comprehension.