Year 12 ICAS English 5-Question Sample

Question 1 of 5 Vocabulary

In a language-conventions check in guided practice, which choice is the most concise and correct completion: "The cause of the fault was ____"

Standard English usage

Item	Task
The cause of the fault was ____	choose the correct standard English

A due to the reason of a loose connection. B a loose connection. C because of a loose connection being loose. D caused by the cause of a loose connection.

Question 2 of 5 Voice

During a proofreading task in guided practice, which choice best suits the formal register: "In a formal letter, we must ____ the delay."

Standard English usage

Item	Task
In a formal letter, we must ____ the delay.	choose the correct standard English

A say sorry about B apologise for C own up to D fess up about

Question 3 of 5 Structure

From the detail that changes the meaning, which statement best describes the main purpose of "The Understudy"?

Narrative extract

The Understudy

For eleven weeks Dev learned the part he was not going to play. He marked the blocking in pencil, sat in the third row with the script closed, and mouthed the lines a beat behind the man who would say them every night until the run ended. A context note beside the understudy entry makes the reader compare the exact wording before choosing.

On the Thursday the lead was ill, and Dev was told at four. What he felt was not the surge he had rehearsed feeling. It was closer to reluctance, and underneath it something he could only describe afterwards as the loss of a private arrangement he had come to prefer.

He played the part well. The reviews were kind and the lead returned on Saturday. Dev kept the pencilled script, which is the detail his sister found strange, since he had never once opened it after that night.

A to show a character whose motive is repeatedly replaced by more convenient explanations B to trace a character discovering that preparation had become its own reward C to explain how a limited study came to support conclusions it cannot carry D to explain how a survival statistic rose while the programme declined

Question 4 of 5 Comprehension

When separating fact from judgement, what is the strongest inference a reader can make from the whole text?

Narrative extract

The Last Tenant

The other flats had been empty since March. Mrs Oyelaran paid her rent into an account that the managing agent had stopped reconciling, and each month the receipt arrived stamped by a machine in an office that no longer had staff. A final note beside the last tenant entry makes the reader compare the exact wording before choosing.

The developers assumed sentiment. A journalist assumed protest. Both were told, politely, that neither was correct, and neither published the correction, because a woman refusing to leave her home of forty years is a better story than a woman waiting for a hearing date in a matter she has not discussed publicly.

She watered the plants on the landing, including the ones belonging to flats whose tenants had gone. That was the detail everybody used and nobody understood.

A the failure lies in how the study was used rather than in how it was conducted B the accounts given of her are shaped by what makes a better story rather than by evidence C the reported figure improves precisely because the worst outcomes leave the sample D the petition shaped the timing and safety of a decision rather than the decision itself

Question 5 of 5 Vocabulary

In this text, what does "established" most nearly mean?

Science editorial

The Missing Control

The study is cited in four policy documents and has no control group. Two hundred participants completed the programme, their scores improved, and the improvement is real in the narrow sense that the numbers rose. What cannot be established is whether the programme caused it. A short note beside the missing control entry makes the reader compare the exact wording before choosing.

The authors are careful about this and say so on page nine. The policy documents cite page three. That gap is the whole problem, and it is not the authors' failure: a study can be honest about its limits and still be quoted as though it had none.

A control group would have cost roughly a fifth of the total budget. It is easy to say now that this was money worth spending, though it is worth noticing that the same argument was available beforehand and was made, in the funding submission, by a reviewer whose objection is recorded in the appendix.

A a planned list of things to be done B relating to one thing bringing about another C able to be read and understood D shown to be true beyond reasonable doubt

Year 12 English sample

Answer the sample questions