NAPLAN Reading common mistakes
NAPLAN Reading · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Choosing an answer that matches a word repeated in the passage rather than the option that restates the idea in different words.
Under time pressure, students scan for familiar wording and treat surface word overlap as proof, missing that the correct option usually paraphrases or summarises while distractors copy the text verbatim but distort the meaning.
What to do instead
Practise turning each option into a question and locating the exact sentence that decides it; train students to reject options justified only by matching words and to accept options that keep the same meaning with new vocabulary.
Answering an inference question with something the passage never states, or refusing to infer because the answer is not written literally.
Students confuse inference with guessing or with literal retrieval, so they either invent plausible-sounding details from general knowledge or leave out answers that require joining two sentences.
What to do instead
Teach the two-sentence chain: find the stated clue, then state what it implies, and check that the chosen option is supported by that clue rather than by outside knowledge; drill with questions that ask what a character probably felt or why an event happened.
Missing the point of a question's command word, for example summarising when asked to explain, or describing when asked to compare.
Command words are skimmed because students read the stem once quickly and then jump to the options or begin writing, so the required thinking operation is never identified.
What to do instead
Have students underline the command word and rewrite the question in their own words before answering; build a class chart of command words (identify, explain, compare, evaluate, summarise) with what each demands.
Running out of time on the final text or leaving multi-part questions blank because too long was spent on one difficult item.
Students treat every question as equally costly and refuse to move on without solving it, so a single hard item consumes the budget for several easier marks later in the paper.
What to do instead
Set timed practice with a rule to mark and skip after a set interval, then return; rehearse a pacing plan that allocates reading time per text and leaves a few minutes for checking unanswered items.
Writing a persuasive or narrative piece with no clear structure, so ideas arrive in the order they were thought of rather than in paragraphs with a controlling idea.
Students plan minimally or not at all because they believe planning wastes exam time, and they have not internalised paragraphing as a way to organise argument or plot.
What to do instead
Require a two-minute plan (position or problem, three supporting points or events, resolution) before writing, and practise writing body paragraphs that open with a topic sentence and close with a link to the overall position.
Using impressive-sounding vocabulary incorrectly, or repeating the same sentence openings and connectives throughout a piece.
Students equate sophistication with long words and have a small stock of sentence starters, so they force in words whose meaning or grammar they do not control and produce repetitive, sometimes incoherent prose.
What to do instead
Teach vocabulary in context with collocations and example sentences, and drill sentence-combining and varied openers (prepositional phrase, subordinate clause, single-word sentence) so variety comes from structure rather than risky word choice.
Writing sentences that splice two independent clauses with a comma, or that run together with no punctuation at all.
Students punctuate by ear and pause, so they place a comma where they would breathe instead of where a grammatical boundary requires a full stop, semicolon, or conjunction.
What to do instead
Teach the independent-clause test explicitly: if both halves can stand alone, a comma alone is not enough; practise converting comma splices into three correct versions using a full stop, a semicolon, and a coordinating conjunction.
Confusing homophones and near-homophones in spelling, such as their, there and they're, or practice and practise.
Students rely on sound-based spelling and have not stored the grammatical role each word plays, so they choose the form that sounds right rather than the form the sentence needs.
What to do instead
Group homophones by grammatical function and have students write sentence pairs that contrast them; use quick editing tasks where students must justify each choice by naming the word's job in the sentence.
Making agreement errors between subject and verb, or between pronoun and its noun, especially when phrases come between them.
The intervening phrase pulls attention to the nearest noun, so the verb or pronoun is matched to the wrong word; long noun phrases overload working memory during editing.
What to do instead
Train students to bracket or cross out interrupting phrases and read the skeleton of the sentence (subject plus verb) to check agreement; include items where a singular subject is followed by a plural phrase.
Ignoring units, scale, and the actual question in numeracy word problems, then computing with whichever numbers appear first.
Students pattern-match to a familiar operation instead of modelling the situation, and they answer the number they calculated rather than the quantity requested, such as giving a total when a difference was asked for.
What to do instead
Require a written estimate and a unit check before calculating, and a final reread of the question with the answer labelled in units; practise problems where an extra number is irrelevant or a unit conversion is needed.